On Sept. 20, 1853, Elisha Graves Otis sold his first “hoist machine,” or elevator, featuring an automatic safety brake he had patented. His seemingly simple invention was designed to stop a platform ...

Without elevators, cities wouldn’t exist as they do today. And without safety elevators, most people would never get on one. The first safety elevator — which, in the event of the cable breaking, ...

In Bristol, Conn., just a 9 iron from the campus headquarters of ESPN, in a valley near a historic amusement park, a strange white tower is the only building sticking up into the sky. Hawks nest in ...

Elisha Otis demonstrates his new “safety elevator” at the Crystal Palace exposition hall in 1854. Though the illustration shows an assistant cutting the elevator cable with a knife, the Otis Elevator ...

The history of the elevator, if you define it as a platform that can move people and objects up and down, is actually a rather long one. Rudimentary elevators are known to have been in use in ancient ...

Elisha Graves Otis born on August 3, 1811, was an American industrialist and founder of the Otis Elevator Company. The success of his company was made possible by his invention of a safety device that ...

Many technological advancements have changed the way we design in the past 150 years, but perhaps none has had a greater impact than the invention of the passenger elevator. Prior to Elisha Otis’ ...

— -- After Elisha Otis created the safety elevator in 1852, the world changed. The Connecticut inventor, who was born 201 years ago today, perfected a safety brake that prevented an elevator from ...

In 1894, some ten years before automobiles mainstreamed horizontal transportation, the Otis Elevator Company installed the world’s first push-button elevator. Arguably this small vehicle did more to ...