Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tex Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey everyone, then, welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren. This is a podcast.
Speaker 1: It's gonna have a lot of ups and down because
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about how elevators work. Yep, yes,
Speaker 1: we are so, um you know elevators. Most of us
Speaker 1: are pretty familiar with these things. Anyone who lives in
Speaker 1: any place has buildings that are for stories, are higher
Speaker 1: probably is very familiar with them. Really, humanity has been
Speaker 1: pretty pretty familiar with these or at least some kind
Speaker 1: of hoisting device for recorded history. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it turns out that we need to get stuff
Speaker 1: to places where that stuff isn't and sometimes that means
Speaker 1: lifting stuff up high places or up to high places
Speaker 1: and having someone carry it there is not always the
Speaker 1: most convenient method, right, So, so hoisting device ice has
Speaker 1: been around for ages. There plenty of examples of various
Speaker 1: Pulley systems. In fact, Archimedes, which are longtime listeners, will
Speaker 1: know that that tech Stuff has done a podcast about
Speaker 1: our comedies. Our comedies was coming up with the first
Speaker 1: Winch and Pulley system, and by that I mean the winch,
Speaker 1: as in something that you wind the cable around and
Speaker 1: turned to to pull it up. Not not like a
Speaker 1: bar far winch. Different, not a bunch of ladies carrying
Speaker 1: tankards and holding onto a rope and saying heave that
Speaker 1: would that would be amusing, but that's not how it works, um.
Speaker 1: Roman architect of Trivious reported that he that our commedies
Speaker 1: had built one of these systems around two d and
Speaker 1: thirty six b C. So that's the kind of time
Speaker 1: frame that we're looking at. And and there's definite evidence
Speaker 1: of Roman pulley elevators, you know, crude hoisting. I don't
Speaker 1: want to say elevators because it's not really the right terminology. Sure,
Speaker 1: but a platform that can be hoisted up through a
Speaker 1: pulley system. Yes, we we're definitely used in the Colosseum
Speaker 1: to move gladiators and various animals that were trying to
Speaker 1: kill them. Not to mention to mention the idea of
Speaker 1: actually just constructing some of those massive stone structures that
Speaker 1: you've seen. If you've if you've ever toured around Europe
Speaker 1: like places like Italy and you've seen these large buildings,
Speaker 1: you know that they're scaffolding and hoists and things of
Speaker 1: that nature that we're used to to lift stuff, so cranes,
Speaker 1: things like that. Well, all this is related to the
Speaker 1: idea of elevators as far as an elevator that was
Speaker 1: used to like move people up and down floors. Uh,
Speaker 1: A predecessor for that still not really a true elevator,
Speaker 1: but a processor dates all the way back to seventy
Speaker 1: three a d in this case, and was called the
Speaker 1: flying chair. And it was this was this was King Louis,
Speaker 1: was right, Louis, You know stairs were for fools, said Louis.
Speaker 1: Supposedly this particular, this, this flying chair, this elevator was
Speaker 1: connecting his his his apartments to his mistress's apartments directly
Speaker 1: right and uh. And it was mounted on the outside
Speaker 1: of his palace wall. So this was not some interior elevator. Rather,
Speaker 1: it was a chair he would sit in. He would
Speaker 1: go out to his balcony and say, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: want to pay a little visit to my Saturday night thing.
Speaker 1: And he jumped into the flying chair, although I guess
Speaker 1: he'd probably more very gently settle himself into the flying
Speaker 1: chair and signal for the servants to move the chair
Speaker 1: so that it would make the trip to the the
Speaker 1: courtesan's room. And um, anyway, in this case, the the cables,
Speaker 1: all the stuff that would actually made the flying chair
Speaker 1: rise and descend were hidden by a chimney. So this
Speaker 1: is a chimney that wasn't designed to funnel smoke. It
Speaker 1: was just al the king, yes sort of, it was
Speaker 1: really it was really just to kind of house all
Speaker 1: the ropes and police. And there are counterweights as well
Speaker 1: to help balance this out. We'll explain why counterweights are
Speaker 1: important later on the podcast. Counterweights or something that we
Speaker 1: find in modern day elevators. But the they also had
Speaker 1: servants in those chimneys that were that was their job
Speaker 1: to manually move the roop to so that the king
Speaker 1: could get to his appointment. And uh, yeah, that that
Speaker 1: was a very early kind of example. But obviously not
Speaker 1: all of us have palaces to slap elevators on the
Speaker 1: outside of, right, It wouldn't be until until the eighteen
Speaker 1: hundreds that that further adventures and um, more public hoisting devices,
Speaker 1: right and and and what really made this necessary in
Speaker 1: a way, Well, first of all, we had a lot
Speaker 1: of improvements. This is the industrial revolution that we're getting into,
Speaker 1: and uh, Some of those improvements included ways of producing
Speaker 1: stronger steel and iron, which meant that we had the
Speaker 1: potential to build very very tall buildings, which we could
Speaker 1: not do before. The materials we would use would would
Speaker 1: crack under the intense pressures the compression that they would
Speaker 1: go under if you were to try and keep building upwards. Right,
Speaker 1: because previous to having steel skeletal structures inside buildings, they
Speaker 1: were all masonry frames, which means meant that they required
Speaker 1: thicker and thicker walls the taller that the building got.
Speaker 1: Um So you know, it's it's if you had something
Speaker 1: a grand total of something like seventeen stories on the
Speaker 1: ground floor, the walls would have to be six ft thick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know that's not it's not really sustainable. And
Speaker 1: in a large, large city population area, which was also happening,
Speaker 1: there were a lot more people moving to cities and
Speaker 1: land was becoming much more expensive throughout the course of
Speaker 1: the centuries, exactly. Yeah, you get you get these dense
Speaker 1: urban areas, and so you have two choices. Really, you
Speaker 1: can sprawl, which is something we're very good at here
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, or you could build upward and then have
Speaker 1: people living in flats essentially, and uh and working in
Speaker 1: offices that were in high rises. And it was it
Speaker 1: was the the ads is in steel and iron production
Speaker 1: that would allow this to happen. But you still have
Speaker 1: a problem. How do you get up and down from
Speaker 1: the floor you live or work on down to ground
Speaker 1: floor because after a few floors that becomes laborious after
Speaker 1: after you know, fifteen twenty floors. What's the quote from
Speaker 1: Ghostbusters like, let me know when we get to fifty,
Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna throw out something like that. Something
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, So one of the things that people
Speaker 1: were wanting to to explore was this idea of elevators,
Speaker 1: something that had a mechanical element that could lift a
Speaker 1: platform or lower a platform that people could safely people
Speaker 1: and stuff not just people but stuff as well could
Speaker 1: safely travel in that would get them to wherever they
Speaker 1: needed to go within the building. Um vertically, that is,
Speaker 1: we're not talking about woncovadors. I joked with Lauren before
Speaker 1: we decided to actually do this podcast that we should
Speaker 1: cover woncovaders, But of course those are magical, so they
Speaker 1: don't really count in text stuff. Sometimes in the eighteen twenties,
Speaker 1: Paintern and architect for the names of Thomas Horner and
Speaker 1: Decimus Burton, and I kind of just wanted to make
Speaker 1: this note because Decimus it's such a great name. Come
Speaker 1: back anyway. They collaborated on what was called an Ascending
Speaker 1: Room in London, which which hoisted tourists thirty seven meters high.
Speaker 1: Thirty seven meters that's pretty high. It's not too bad.
Speaker 1: That's that's that's a that's a good. That's a good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're talking like nine floors. That's that's significant for for
Speaker 1: the eighteen twenties um to view the London skyline nice.
Speaker 1: And then by eighteen thirty five in Great Britain they
Speaker 1: were already starting to use elevators that had belt driven sheaves.
Speaker 1: No One a sheave is is it's a special type
Speaker 1: of pulley. It's a it's a pulley that has that
Speaker 1: has grooves on the circumference yea, so it allows it
Speaker 1: to grip onto the rope or cable so that it
Speaker 1: can use traction to to actually move that rope or cable.
Speaker 1: You turn, you you move the elevator by turning the sheave,
Speaker 1: which then pulls the cables as opposed to you know,
Speaker 1: if you think of a traditional pulley, Usually there's a
Speaker 1: weight on one side and then you're holding the rope
Speaker 1: on the other and when you pull down the rope,
Speaker 1: the weight goes up because the pulley rolls and allows
Speaker 1: the rope to move. Right. In this case, you've got
Speaker 1: a pulley system that's actually gripping that rope. So when
Speaker 1: you turn the pulley, it moves the rope itself. It
Speaker 1: does some of the work for you. Yeah. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the important part, because otherwise you'd have to always have
Speaker 1: some sort of external motor that was holding onto the case,
Speaker 1: using a lot of energy to to hold that exactly right.
Speaker 1: So so they had started doing that in eighteen thirty five,
Speaker 1: and they also used counterweights. The counterweights helped provide the
Speaker 1: friction that traction necessary for the sheave to grip onto
Speaker 1: the cable and also made it easier for the elevator
Speaker 1: to move up and down. And again we'll explain more
Speaker 1: about that in a little bit um, but then moving ahead.
Speaker 1: So this is still the very earliest days of elevators.
Speaker 1: By eight the eighteen fifties they started to see steam
Speaker 1: and hydraulic elevators, but they generally weren't used for passengers
Speaker 1: because there was always the potential that the elevator could fail,
Speaker 1: and there weren't any safety measures really in place that
Speaker 1: could prevent an elevator from just plunging after a failure.
Speaker 1: But that was coming up very soon. Yeah, by eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty two, in fact, when the name in elevators, UH
Speaker 1: created an innovation that would allow passengers safe elevators to
Speaker 1: become a thing, and this was the safety break right,
Speaker 1: invented by Elisha Graves Otis. So the Otis elevator. If
Speaker 1: you've ever been in an elevator, there's especially in the
Speaker 1: United States, there's a really really good chance you saw
Speaker 1: the name Otis on the elevator somewhere. It's not to
Speaker 1: say that that's the only company that makes elevators, but
Speaker 1: it's it's a it is a big one and probably
Speaker 1: the best known name, at least in the United States now.
Speaker 1: In eighteen fifty two, that's when Otis invented the safety
Speaker 1: break UH. And it was technically a latch, a safety
Speaker 1: latch that would allow the elevator to remain in position
Speaker 1: if the lift system failed. So, in other words, if
Speaker 1: the cable that was holding the elevator snapped. Uh, this
Speaker 1: safety latch would ratchet in on racks on the side
Speaker 1: of the elevator shaft, inside the shaft right into ah. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you had like the spring loaded essentially a spring loaded
Speaker 1: uh latch, and once the the support system would break,
Speaker 1: it would spring out and catch on one of these
Speaker 1: racks and the elevator would stop falling. And uh. He
Speaker 1: he was actually designing this, not for an elevator for people.
Speaker 1: He was working for a company. It was a betting factory,
Speaker 1: and the betting factory it needed to find a way
Speaker 1: of lifting equipment safely up into the factory floors. And
Speaker 1: so he came up with this idea and then realized,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, this this is great for all elevators. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this could work for well beyond just this one application.
Speaker 1: And so, uh, specifically, the little um bolts that it used,
Speaker 1: they're they're called Poll's p a w l s. That's
Speaker 1: technically any sort of sliding bolt that's designed to fit
Speaker 1: into something into notches usually and uh, and at first
Speaker 1: he was he decided that he was going to go
Speaker 1: into the elevator business pretty early on. By eighteen fifty three,
Speaker 1: he started a company that would eventually become the Otis
Speaker 1: Elevator Company. Uh. And he sold a grand total of
Speaker 1: three whole elevators in the United States, and each one
Speaker 1: he sold for about three hundred bucks, which at the
Speaker 1: time wasn't bad. But but but three of them, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's less than promising. However, that that is why the
Speaker 1: next year, in eighteen fifty four, he decided to demonstrate
Speaker 1: this technology publicly at the World's Fair. Yeah. In fact,
Speaker 1: that was that was his brilliant idea. He said, you know,
Speaker 1: I made three sales and then nothing like the Keep
Speaker 1: in mind this is still early early days for tall
Speaker 1: buildings too, so there there wasn't yet a huge demand
Speaker 1: for elevators. And so he was kind of I hate
Speaker 1: to use this phrase, but I'm going to now anyway,
Speaker 1: he was getting in on the ground floor. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: he decided he'd go to the World's Fair at the
Speaker 1: Crystal Palace Exposition Center in New York City and publicly
Speaker 1: demonstrate how his safety measure would keep elevators safe even
Speaker 1: in the case of a catastrophic failure. And I read
Speaker 1: an account of this and it was pretty interesting. He
Speaker 1: had set up a little uh a demonstration elevator shaft, uh,
Speaker 1: and it was really just the side walls to the
Speaker 1: shaft what would be on the sides of the elevator shaft.
Speaker 1: There's no front, no back, so it gave a clear view,
Speaker 1: all right. He had the platform which served as what
Speaker 1: would be a full elevator, but there were no walls
Speaker 1: to the elevator either. It's just a flat stage really,
Speaker 1: And then there was a rope that hoisted the stage
Speaker 1: up to the top of the as far up on
Speaker 1: the shaft as it could go without falling off the
Speaker 1: guide rails. And then he got everyone's attention and cut
Speaker 1: the rope. The shaft fell about a foot or so
Speaker 1: and then caught onto the ratchet ratcheted notches that were
Speaker 1: on the sides of the shaft, and the elevator was sturdy.
Speaker 1: It stayed there and and he proved that it worked.
Speaker 1: And he did this demonstration multiple times. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: the one time, but um that ended up being an
Speaker 1: incredibly effective demonstration. People began to see that there was
Speaker 1: promise in this that uh, that the safety measures would
Speaker 1: be effective, and so they started to really think about
Speaker 1: using elevators to help make high rises a possibility to
Speaker 1: keep in mind if this had not worked, If if
Speaker 1: he had not done this, the development of the high
Speaker 1: rise type city would have been held off for how
Speaker 1: many years I'm sure we would be there by now.
Speaker 1: One else would have come up with the idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but just imagine how different our cities would look because
Speaker 1: buildings that were built early in that phase would not
Speaker 1: have been built. They would have been put off, which
Speaker 1: means that you'd have a totally different kind of architectural
Speaker 1: style in place by the time that they were being built.
Speaker 1: So do you think about it. The elevator is why
Speaker 1: some of our most famous cities look the way they do.
Speaker 1: It's kind of cool to think of it that way.
Speaker 1: It's it's all. It's all. Yeah. The conflagration of of
Speaker 1: that and property values and steel frames, yeah yeah. The
Speaker 1: fact that all these things were working together at the
Speaker 1: same time. It was just very fortuitous, especially for otis Uh.
Speaker 1: In eighteen fifty seven, he then installed the first passenger
Speaker 1: safe elevator in a New York department store called and
Speaker 1: I'm no, I'm gonna get this one messed up? E
Speaker 1: V how what and company? This? This was a five
Speaker 1: story department store YEP and the elevator could rise at
Speaker 1: the mercurial speed of forty per minute. Now keep in
Speaker 1: mind in general ten feet that's about on story, so
Speaker 1: that means it could go at four floors in one minute.
Speaker 1: I thought our elevators were slow, But that would be
Speaker 1: that would be a leisurely elevator ride, if you were
Speaker 1: going from the ground floor to the top floor. That
Speaker 1: would But if but if it's the first elevator you've
Speaker 1: ever been in, that possibly anyone has ever been, might
Speaker 1: been gripping onto the side in terror for fear of
Speaker 1: how fast it was moving. Yeah, yeah, I guess so. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then in eighteen sixty one, Otis dies from diphtheria
Speaker 1: because even though his elevators wouldn't fall, he fell ill.
Speaker 1: Jonathan wrote that in the notes and I and I've
Speaker 1: already groaned and shaken my head at it at an
Speaker 1: earlier point today. And then she was wondering if I
Speaker 1: would actually read it, and oh no, oh, no, I
Speaker 1: knew you. Yeah, you've worked with me long enough now
Speaker 1: on April. He died on April eighth, and that was
Speaker 1: just a few months after he had been granted a
Speaker 1: patent for his invention. Now keep in mind you know,
Speaker 1: you file a patent and it can take several years
Speaker 1: from the time you file it to the time it's approved, right,
Speaker 1: I think he had He had applied for it a
Speaker 1: full ten years previous to that in UH in eighteen
Speaker 1: six No, so it was nine nine years, just just
Speaker 1: under a decade, and he got that patent granted UH
Speaker 1: in January of eighteen sixty one. So he he did
Speaker 1: live to see his invention patented, but not long after
Speaker 1: that he fell ill from diphtheria, which there wasn't dip
Speaker 1: Theoria epidemic at the time. He died in Yonkers, New York,
Speaker 1: and his his sons, however, h survived and one of them,
Speaker 1: Charles Otis, was known as being the businessman in the family.
Speaker 1: He had a very keen I for business, and so
Speaker 1: they took over the company and UH and they continued
Speaker 1: to run the company and they were very successful in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy three. By eighteen seventy three, so this is
Speaker 1: just a little over a decade after Otis had passed away,
Speaker 1: the Otis Company had sold over two thousand l of
Speaker 1: leaders working in places like offices, hotels, and department stores.
Speaker 1: And then by eight eighty that's when a fellow, a
Speaker 1: German by the name of Furner Vaughan Siemens, is the
Speaker 1: first to actually use an electric motor in elevator construction.
Speaker 1: And his version was really interesting. It didn't involve cables.
Speaker 1: You know, most most motors involve pulling some sort of
Speaker 1: cable system to raise or lower an elevator. They're usually
Speaker 1: they're usually working directly on that sheaf that we were mentioning, right. Instead,
Speaker 1: what this one did was it had pinion gears that
Speaker 1: engaged racks on either side of the elevator shaft and
Speaker 1: literally the gears would yeah, yeah, exactly. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of like think of it like a locomotive, but going
Speaker 1: vertical instead of horizontal. But but of course you have
Speaker 1: to have those pinion gears because otherwise you don't have
Speaker 1: enough traction to make the elevator go up. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that was that was the first u of it. Now,
Speaker 1: later we would see the electric motor. In fact, shortly
Speaker 1: later there would be electric motors that would actually use
Speaker 1: more traditional cable systems. Um. But that was the earliest
Speaker 1: uh use that I could find for an electric motor. Ye,
Speaker 1: all the all the other motors up to this point
Speaker 1: where being run by steam. Yeah, they had steam powered
Speaker 1: and hydraulic powered and hydraulics and that was it. That
Speaker 1: was it until eighteen eighty. By eight the Otis Company
Speaker 1: had merged with fourteen other elevator companies to become the
Speaker 1: Otis Elevator Company. So Otis was not the only name
Speaker 1: in the elevator business at that time, but once it
Speaker 1: merged with these other fourteen companies, that became probably I
Speaker 1: would say, the most uh prevalent, most powerful elevator company
Speaker 1: in the United States easily. This was this was around
Speaker 1: the era when when Steele was really really taking off
Speaker 1: and um and the the the last of the big
Speaker 1: masonry frame buildings had were we're being completed at the time,
Speaker 1: everything new that was starting out was all steals. So
Speaker 1: it was a huge business. Yeah yeah, and it ended
Speaker 1: up being uh. While the elevator industry in general, just
Speaker 1: like the joke I said at the top, it did
Speaker 1: have its ups and downs. It's is both both true
Speaker 1: and funny. Um uh. You know, because there was this
Speaker 1: ongoing trend to taller buildings. Anyone who was in the
Speaker 1: industry knew that there was a future in it. It wasn't.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like suddenly people weren't going to want elevators
Speaker 1: anymore unless they decided that they no longer wanted to
Speaker 1: have tall buildings and would rather sprawl out again. And
Speaker 1: that just didn't seem like that was ever going to
Speaker 1: come to be an option. So uh, really, that's the
Speaker 1: basic of the timeline. I mean, of course, lots of
Speaker 1: advances have happened since then, but that we just wanted
Speaker 1: to kind of cover the sort of the history of
Speaker 1: the origin, the origin of elevators and then go into
Speaker 1: more about how they actually work. And the first one
Speaker 1: we wanted to talk about, we're elevators that use and
Speaker 1: that are elevators really because there's still are elevators that
Speaker 1: do this that use hydraulic lift systems. They aren't using
Speaker 1: cables at all, so and yeah, yeah, so so there
Speaker 1: there are two basic systems, hydraulic and cables. And and yes,
Speaker 1: hydraulics are slightly less common for several reasons that were
Speaker 1: that we will get into in a moment. Right, So,
Speaker 1: if you have a shorter type of building, like to
Speaker 1: two to five story, I would say maybe even two
Speaker 1: to four hydraulic elevators may be something that you've experienced,
Speaker 1: because um, I mean I actually knew. I used to
Speaker 1: one of the libraries I used to go to as
Speaker 1: a kid had a hydraulic elevator. Um. And the way
Speaker 1: these work is beneath the bottom floor. So you've got
Speaker 1: the you know, the ground floor where the elevator comes
Speaker 1: down to a stop. That's its final stop. It can't
Speaker 1: go any lower and dug down Beneath that, yeah, is
Speaker 1: your hydraulic system. And that system consists of there's a cylinder.
Speaker 1: Inside that cylinder is a piston that has the hydraulic
Speaker 1: ram at the end of it that connects directly to
Speaker 1: the bottom of the elevator. And then you the connected
Speaker 1: to that cylinder is a holding tank that holds all
Speaker 1: the hydraulic fluid. That has a very powerful pump that
Speaker 1: can pump fluid from the hydraulic tank into the cylinder.
Speaker 1: And then there's also a return valve that when it's closed,
Speaker 1: won't allow hydraulic fluid back in, but when you open it,
Speaker 1: it does allow hydraulic fluid to move from the cylinder
Speaker 1: back into the holding tank. Now, this is a closed
Speaker 1: system that means that that hydraulic fluid is either going
Speaker 1: to be in the tank or in the cylinder, or
Speaker 1: there's gonna be some mix of you moving in between
Speaker 1: the two. Right. But they but you don't lose hydraulic fluid,
Speaker 1: assuming that there are no leaks. So uh, it means
Speaker 1: that you can reuse that fluid over and over and
Speaker 1: over and over again. So that's one reason why it's popular. Um. So,
Speaker 1: the way it works is that you turn Let's say
Speaker 1: that you're on the ground floor and you hit two,
Speaker 1: you want to go up to the second floor. What
Speaker 1: happens is that sends a signal to the hydraulic system
Speaker 1: beneath the elevator. Uh, turns on the pump that then
Speaker 1: starts to pump hydraulic fluid from the holding tank into
Speaker 1: the cylinder. Right that the fluid pushes on the hydraulic
Speaker 1: ram or piston and moves it up the shaft. That's right.
Speaker 1: It displaces the piston from the cylinder. So, depending on
Speaker 1: how tall your building is, it may have to pump
Speaker 1: more or less fluid into you know, whatever floor you've pressed.
Speaker 1: So if it's a four story building and you've hit four,
Speaker 1: it obviously needs to pump in enough fluid to get
Speaker 1: to lift the ram all the way up to the
Speaker 1: fourth floor. Uh. And then when you're coming down, the
Speaker 1: valve opens up and allows fluid fluid to come back
Speaker 1: into the holding tank and just basically let's gravity pull
Speaker 1: the car back right and you control the descent by
Speaker 1: the aperture of the valve. I mean, obviously, if you
Speaker 1: if you were to open the valve all the way
Speaker 1: up and it was a large valve, then that elevator
Speaker 1: could descend at an alarming rate. But it's usually a
Speaker 1: pretty a pretty tight system. So so it's usually it's
Speaker 1: usually the pressure of the fluid and hence hydraulics that
Speaker 1: are allowing it to you ease gently back down to
Speaker 1: exactly ground exactly or whatever, right exactly. Uh, it's it's
Speaker 1: very you know, like I said, I've written in these
Speaker 1: kind of systems before, and uh, it's a gradual ride.
Speaker 1: It's it's um But I mean it was a library
Speaker 1: in rural Georgia. You know, most of the people going
Speaker 1: to this were in their latent four hundreds, so you know,
Speaker 1: they don't need something that's going to be an exciting
Speaker 1: ride up and down the side of a glass high
Speaker 1: rise in Atlanta. All right. The speed is one issue um,
Speaker 1: they are slower. And the thing with that, with that
Speaker 1: piston system is that you have to dig the further
Speaker 1: up the piston is going to push, it needs to
Speaker 1: be at least that long going down into the ground. Exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So if you're telling four stories up, you have to
Speaker 1: dig far enough down so that that piston, when it's
Speaker 1: completely retracted, fits right about four stories into the ground.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. And then when it's fully extended, that means
Speaker 1: that the whole system is eight stories all because you
Speaker 1: have to have you know, these pistons don't retract. It's
Speaker 1: not like they are kind of collapsible telescope. No, it's not, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: it's it's a solid piece. And so uh yeah, if
Speaker 1: you want to have a forty story building, that would
Speaker 1: mean that you'd have to have a piston that was
Speaker 1: incredibly long and you'd have to dig really far down.
Speaker 1: It's just not practical. So so that's uncommon. Uh, And
Speaker 1: you normally run into rope or cable systems are often
Speaker 1: that the names are interchangeable because when they're talking about
Speaker 1: ropes are talking about steel ropes, and we will explain
Speaker 1: exactly how those work in just a moment. But before
Speaker 1: we do, let's take a quick break and we're back,
Speaker 1: all right, So let's talk about cable or rope system elevators.
Speaker 1: These are probably, I would say, these are the most
Speaker 1: common types of elevators that you're going to find, definitely,
Speaker 1: and uh, and they do they rely on what it
Speaker 1: sounds like, they rely on cables or ropes steel ropes. Right.
Speaker 1: Right now, You've got these these traction steel ropes that
Speaker 1: are going to be attached on one end to the
Speaker 1: elevator car then go loop up around a sheave, right,
Speaker 1: which is that that pulley that has those grooves in
Speaker 1: it that allow it to grip onto the rope or
Speaker 1: cable right and then attach at the other end to
Speaker 1: um to a counterweight, right. And the reason for the
Speaker 1: counterweight again is to kind of make the whole system
Speaker 1: work more easily. Here's the idea. Your counterweight typically weighs
Speaker 1: about the same as the elevator when it's at capacity,
Speaker 1: so a little less than a half full elevator. And
Speaker 1: the reason for that is that when the sheaves starts
Speaker 1: to turn, it has to do less work if the
Speaker 1: counterweight and the elevator are close to the same weight. So, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you would imagine that if it were just
Speaker 1: a shave and there was no counterweight there, it would
Speaker 1: have to turn the turning power that torque that has
Speaker 1: a lot harder, And this way it just has to
Speaker 1: overcome a little bit of friction. And then let's the
Speaker 1: weight actually do most of the work. Yeah, and if
Speaker 1: not most of the work, Let's say you've got a
Speaker 1: full elevator and obviously a capacity thing wouldn't wouldn't outweigh
Speaker 1: the full elevator at least offsets some of the power
Speaker 1: needed so that torque that has to generate doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be as great. And this is important so that
Speaker 1: you can just make it an efficient system. Uh. The
Speaker 1: counterweight also helps with some of the safety features as well,
Speaker 1: though it can also be a hazard. We'll get into
Speaker 1: all of that towards the very end. So trickle way
Speaker 1: for us to end the podcast. Actually, now that I
Speaker 1: look at how I laid out my notes and thinking,
Speaker 1: all right, so so so so the sheave is connected
Speaker 1: directly to sometimes directly to a motor. And there there
Speaker 1: are two kinds of these cable system to basic kinds
Speaker 1: of these cable systems gearless elevators and geared elevators and
Speaker 1: the gearless ones. The motor um rotates the sheaf directly,
Speaker 1: and in the gear list it's connected to a gear train.
Speaker 1: Right the geared ones, it's just a series of gears
Speaker 1: that connect the motor to the sheave so that it
Speaker 1: can translate rotational motion to the sheave and allow you
Speaker 1: to pull those ropes and move the elevator up and down. Now,
Speaker 1: a typical elevator, these are not they're not all like this,
Speaker 1: but the typical elevator will have that sheave at the
Speaker 1: top of the elevator shaft, all right. So at the
Speaker 1: very top of the elevator shaft is this this grooved
Speaker 1: pulley that is motorized. So the pulley itself is the
Speaker 1: thing that it turns and moves the elevator up and down.
Speaker 1: You've got the counterweight that is connected to one end
Speaker 1: of the cables. That not only provides the ability for
Speaker 1: the sheave to do work without having to exert more energy,
Speaker 1: but it also creates that tension, that that traction or
Speaker 1: friction that it needs in order to move the cable
Speaker 1: that holds the court taut against the sheaf, right, and
Speaker 1: that and that's why the sheaf. When it turns, the
Speaker 1: cable itself moves. Otherwise it could just slip against the cable.
Speaker 1: That would obviously be dangerous and it wouldn't or best
Speaker 1: case scenario, your elevator doesn't go anywhere, it's just spinning.
Speaker 1: The sheet would just be spinning against the cable. Worst
Speaker 1: case scenario, it could cause a terrible accident. Uh. There
Speaker 1: By the way, multiple cables connected between the elevator and
Speaker 1: the counterweight going around the sheave. It's not like there's
Speaker 1: just one. It's not like in the movies where where
Speaker 1: you know, like one little metal thing kind of snaps
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden an elevator goes plummeting.
Speaker 1: There's usually seven or eight of these things and very strong. Still,
Speaker 1: Like one of these cables would be capable of holding
Speaker 1: up the elevator, but there's seven or eight backups, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: they the idea of being usually I think the fewest
Speaker 1: I've ever seen was four. So between four and eight
Speaker 1: cables is typical. And like you said, Lauren, each one
Speaker 1: of these would be more than capable of holding up
Speaker 1: the elevator in its own You have that those others
Speaker 1: for redundancy because obviously you don't want to have your
Speaker 1: elevator be unsafe. So so so yeah, so so, the
Speaker 1: the sheave and the motor usually UM contained in a
Speaker 1: compartment above the elevator or sometimes on the side. Occasionally
Speaker 1: there will be cabinets on the side and UM and
Speaker 1: the sheave will be on the side there and moving
Speaker 1: everything along that way. That it's it's a little bit
Speaker 1: more complicated. But yeah, I've seen like the simplest one
Speaker 1: has the sheave mounted to the elevator shaft and it's
Speaker 1: completely separate from the elevator. But there are elevators that
Speaker 1: have motors that are connected to the elevator itself, not
Speaker 1: to a not to something that's mounted on the shaft.
Speaker 1: It still works on the same principle, right, It's still
Speaker 1: got this rotating sheave that is moving the cable through,
Speaker 1: but you've just located the sheave on a different part
Speaker 1: of the system. So instead of it being part of
Speaker 1: the building, it's part of the elevator. Isn't isn't the
Speaker 1: Marriott in downtown Atlanta? Um? It could be. I feel
Speaker 1: like I could be completely lying, folks. I have no idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've got a lot of fancy elevator systems down in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: For example, if you ever are in Atlanta and you
Speaker 1: want to have a real treat, you go to the
Speaker 1: UH Peachtree Tower and you ride the glass elevator all
Speaker 1: the way up, which is on mounted on the side
Speaker 1: of the building, so you actually have a view of
Speaker 1: the outside of Atlanta, and ride that all the way
Speaker 1: up to the rotating restaurant called the sun Dial at
Speaker 1: the very top of the Peach Tree Towers high. I
Speaker 1: don't know the two floors which is personally comfortable with that.
Speaker 1: I'm sure many of our listeners live in cities where
Speaker 1: seventy two floors is not But for Atlanta, that's pretty tall. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's an exciting right, I gotta say I've I've
Speaker 1: gone up there many times. Um. But yeah, So so
Speaker 1: we've got We've covered the counterweight, We've covered the sheaveh
Speaker 1: We've covered the fact that we use the counterweight to
Speaker 1: help conserve energy and with the idea of the potential energy.
Speaker 1: These elevators also have lots and lots of safety features.
Speaker 1: Oh and before I mentioned going to safety features, I
Speaker 1: should also mention the elevator car and the counterweight ride
Speaker 1: on guide rails very important. The rails are what keep
Speaker 1: them from swaying when they're going up and down the shaft,
Speaker 1: which anyone could tell you is a good thing, right absolutely,
Speaker 1: and it also helps out with some of those safety
Speaker 1: features that we're going to talk out talk about in
Speaker 1: a second. Yeah. In fact, let's just go ahead and
Speaker 1: segue into that, because you know, we need to talk
Speaker 1: about the sort of things that keep elevators safe. That
Speaker 1: was you know, the little opinion system that OTIS came
Speaker 1: up with, little system the thing that made elevators possible.
Speaker 1: That that was one element that was elevator safety. But
Speaker 1: of course when we're talking about uh, elevator systems that
Speaker 1: can go all the way up to over seventy floors,
Speaker 1: then you want lots of different safety features there, you know,
Speaker 1: lots of redundancy, not just uh some some little palls
Speaker 1: and some racks that are on the side of the
Speaker 1: elevator shaft. Right right, Yeah, that's that's okay for five stories,
Speaker 1: but I'm less trustful of it first saying, you know,
Speaker 1: a hundred um so so. So the main kind of
Speaker 1: system that we're working with here is is called a
Speaker 1: governor system. Yeah, and it's uh, I was very disappointed
Speaker 1: to find out that it wasn't like a cockney thing
Speaker 1: so we could like the governor. The governor, Um, no,
Speaker 1: it's and by the way, I did a little arm
Speaker 1: thing that you know, you guys don't get the benefit of.
Speaker 1: But I think if you say governor, you have to
Speaker 1: do a little like a little little swing your arm.
Speaker 1: Just a governor. Um, sorry, all my friends in the UK,
Speaker 1: former friends in the UK. So the governor is is
Speaker 1: a safety feature that is supposed to help prevent the
Speaker 1: elevator from moving to quickly. And it's it's literally springs
Speaker 1: into place if it does move too quickly. Right, this
Speaker 1: is a this is a second rope system. There's there's
Speaker 1: a rope um it's it's looped around the governor sheave
Speaker 1: at the top of the shaft, and then another weighted
Speaker 1: sheaf at the bottom. Right. So in this case you've
Speaker 1: got the main set of ropes or cables that are
Speaker 1: attached to the counterweight and to the elevator which move
Speaker 1: the elevator itself and the elevator sheaf, and then there's
Speaker 1: a secondary sheave and cable system that's the governor sheaf.
Speaker 1: This is completely separate. It is connected to that main sheaf,
Speaker 1: but but it is attached to the elevator. It's got
Speaker 1: these two sheaves, one on the top, one at the bottom,
Speaker 1: and then is connected in the middle to the elevator,
Speaker 1: so that when the elevator moves, this rope moves in
Speaker 1: between the two sheaves. Right, the governor sheave is actually
Speaker 1: has flyweights. These are these weights that are held in
Speaker 1: place by a high tension spring. They pivot on pins
Speaker 1: inside the sheave and uh and and are attached to
Speaker 1: each other so that they're not because they've got little
Speaker 1: hooks on the ends. Right, they've got the teeth so
Speaker 1: that it actually hooks into notches that are on the
Speaker 1: inside of the governor sheaf. Okay, so the governor sheaf
Speaker 1: has these notches that are stationary. They do not turn
Speaker 1: with the rest of the sheep. The fly flyweights do
Speaker 1: turn with the rest of the sheep. Now, there's a
Speaker 1: tension spring that holds those flyweights in place. But if
Speaker 1: the faster that the that the governor sheaf is turning,
Speaker 1: the stretchier the spring gets right because of centrifugal force. Correct,
Speaker 1: So as the centrifugal force gets strong enough, if it's
Speaker 1: if it's spinning fast enough for the centrifugal force to
Speaker 1: to counteract the tension on the spring. Those flyweights spring
Speaker 1: out and then they catch on those ratchets on the
Speaker 1: inside of the sheet, which again are stationary. The inside
Speaker 1: the sheave is not turning. It's the outside that's turning
Speaker 1: in these fly weights that are turning, and so the
Speaker 1: fly weights will hook into it and stop the governor sheave,
Speaker 1: which will stop the rope, which will stop the elevator. Connor, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's um. Usually it also enacts a breaking system,
Speaker 1: so it's not like it just jerks to a halt,
Speaker 1: but it does, in our enact a breaking system that
Speaker 1: will make the elevator slow down and then ultimately stop.
Speaker 1: And this is you know, necessary for any elevator system
Speaker 1: where you're going more than a floor. So obviously the
Speaker 1: higher up you are, interestingly enough, the more uh likely
Speaker 1: the system will kick into place, because your elevator will
Speaker 1: be accelerating at the speed of that while the accelerati
Speaker 1: of speed of gravity and uh, assuming there's nothing else
Speaker 1: holding it back that's slowing it down, so it actually
Speaker 1: will be more likely to to to activate the further
Speaker 1: up you are. UM kind of a terrifying thought, but
Speaker 1: it is true. Another part of the safety system is,
Speaker 1: just like you said, Lauren, just the ropes themselves, because
Speaker 1: they are all so strong. They're made out of steel material,
Speaker 1: they're wound around. It's kind of braided in a way,
Speaker 1: braided steel and uh. And like we said, one rope
Speaker 1: can support the weight of an elevator, a full elevator,
Speaker 1: but they usually have between four and eight so that
Speaker 1: you don't have to worry so much. If one rope snaps,
Speaker 1: the others can hold on just as well. And then
Speaker 1: you've got some electro magnetic brakes that are supposed to
Speaker 1: pop into place if the elevator exceeds a certain speed. Right,
Speaker 1: the electromagnets under normal circumstances hold the brakes open, and
Speaker 1: then if something terrible happens, they snap those brakes down. Right.
Speaker 1: So these are all the different systems. And then there's
Speaker 1: the there's the final uh safety measure in an elevator
Speaker 1: system that's common amongst most elevators. All else fails, and
Speaker 1: the and the elevator car does fall down the shaft,
Speaker 1: there's usually something at the bottom that's going to help
Speaker 1: cushion that fall, right, there's usually some sort of shock
Speaker 1: absorbent system. It might be a fluid filled system where
Speaker 1: it's like a again like a cylinder with a piston
Speaker 1: with oil in it, so that uh, the oil in
Speaker 1: the cylinder and then as the elevator makes contact, it compresses.
Speaker 1: It could be a spring system. It could be essentially
Speaker 1: what amounts to an elevator style crash pad. Right, It
Speaker 1: all depends on the actual system. But these are you know,
Speaker 1: some sort of shock absorber that will you if you've
Speaker 1: ever seen a seen an open elevator shaft, I mean,
Speaker 1: don't go looking for this, but you know, if you've
Speaker 1: ever seen a seen the elevator doors open on the
Speaker 1: ground floor and you see some kind of large cylinder
Speaker 1: sort of thing, that's that's what that is. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that covers the the safety. Uh, we didn't really
Speaker 1: talk so much about the doors. The doors do usually
Speaker 1: have some sort of automatic system so that if it
Speaker 1: detects that there is an obstruction, they will open automatically.
Speaker 1: That's what's supposed to happen. We'll get into whatppens when
Speaker 1: that doesn't happen in a minute. Um. And then there's
Speaker 1: also the whole idea about selecting your floor. Now, back
Speaker 1: in the old days, right, right, you had to have
Speaker 1: an elevator technician bell hop. Yeah, yeah, the I know
Speaker 1: there's I know that there's a specific term and I
Speaker 1: can't come up with it either, but yes, you have
Speaker 1: an elevator attendant essentially. But the elevator attendance job would
Speaker 1: be you would walk in and you know, you've probably
Speaker 1: seen these in movies as someone who's dressed up in
Speaker 1: the fancy outfits this what floor, and then you tell
Speaker 1: the person and they make sure that the elevator doors
Speaker 1: are closed. Usually in these systems, the elevator was designed
Speaker 1: so that it would not work unless the doors were closed.
Speaker 1: It's not true in the case of every elevator, but
Speaker 1: it was one of those safety features, right. And those
Speaker 1: those original elevators had had two sets of doors. They
Speaker 1: had interior doors attached to the cab to to the
Speaker 1: car of the elevator that um that would that would
Speaker 1: lock into place, or that the that the cabby would
Speaker 1: would look into place. And then the exterior doors were
Speaker 1: opper rated external externally. Yeah, you had to have the
Speaker 1: external door so that people wouldn't just wander up and
Speaker 1: fall down an elevator shaft, which has happened and I'll
Speaker 1: cover that, but they were all manual, right yeah, so, um,
Speaker 1: so what would happen is you would tell the elevator
Speaker 1: operator where you wanted to go, like what floor you
Speaker 1: wanted to go on, and then they would hit a
Speaker 1: switch which would essentially be climb or descend, and then
Speaker 1: once you got to the place that you were going,
Speaker 1: they would turn it off and you would get off
Speaker 1: the elevator. And a good elevator operator would be able
Speaker 1: to stop the elevator. So we was right there at
Speaker 1: the floor and you didn't have like a list step
Speaker 1: up and down, yeah, which could cause problems. You could
Speaker 1: you could trip and fall or something. Um. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: these days we have computer systems that automate all this
Speaker 1: where you've got a panel of lights or sorry, go ahead, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Yeah, you were you were talking about the
Speaker 1: external That's completely right, Lauren, I was. I was talking
Speaker 1: about buttons because I think buttons light up. But you
Speaker 1: know the button, when you press a button, it tells
Speaker 1: essentially sends a signal saying that this elevator needs to
Speaker 1: go to this floor. How does the computer know what
Speaker 1: floor the elevators already on Lauren. Huh uh. That that
Speaker 1: is done by a series of of of lights or
Speaker 1: magnets or other indicators along the wall of a shaft,
Speaker 1: and as the as the elevator car moves past them,
Speaker 1: the computer takes note of where it is. Right, So
Speaker 1: essentially the computer is counting what floors you are on,
Speaker 1: and that's how it senses it. Now, you can get
Speaker 1: into more advanced sensors these days, but that's that's sort
Speaker 1: of the classic way, right, So uh yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty simple stuff. You know, you hit a button and
Speaker 1: it just sends a signal saying this elevator needs to
Speaker 1: go to this floor, and the mechanics do the rest
Speaker 1: once the computer has processed that request. And there's a
Speaker 1: couple different levels of computer sophistication that are involved. The
Speaker 1: classic ones will just go up until no one has
Speaker 1: pressed up anymore, and then we'll start to collect the
Speaker 1: down calls again. Right. In other words, if you've got, uh,
Speaker 1: if you've got three people in the elevator, someone's hit to,
Speaker 1: someone's hit four, someone's hit eight, But there's someone on
Speaker 1: floor seven who wants to go down, that elevator is
Speaker 1: not going to stop for the person on seven until
Speaker 1: it's let off the person from eight uh and and
Speaker 1: there's there's lots of newer systems coming out that that
Speaker 1: will assess traffic patterns and send alternate elevators to alternate
Speaker 1: floors at different times of the day, depending on who
Speaker 1: needs to go where it's It can get a lot
Speaker 1: more complicated than that. So for example, here in the
Speaker 1: building we work in in the morning, there's almost always
Speaker 1: at least one elevator at the ground floor already because
Speaker 1: not enough people have arrived for those elevators to be
Speaker 1: used in between floors. Right, it's usually ground floor to
Speaker 1: whatever your destination is, and if it's early enough, it's
Speaker 1: only people coming in and small groups. So you walk
Speaker 1: in and you press the button and immediately a door opens.
Speaker 1: It feels like it's magic. Sometimes there's already a door
Speaker 1: open before you even get in there. There have been
Speaker 1: times where I've walked in no doors have been open.
Speaker 1: Before I can even hit the button, it goes bing
Speaker 1: and I think that's security, just do that for me,
Speaker 1: But um or are they watching me? I don't know.
Speaker 1: But either way, they have been more sophisticated and in
Speaker 1: fact they've even gotten so sophisticated, as in some buildings
Speaker 1: that have lots and lots and lots of floors. Instead
Speaker 1: of just hitting up or down, you actually end up
Speaker 1: indicating what floor you're going to floor, and then and
Speaker 1: then you're told which elevator to go wait in front of,
Speaker 1: and then it'll take you to your floor. Um. There
Speaker 1: are plenty of buildings I've worked in that had express
Speaker 1: versions of this, where it just gave you a block
Speaker 1: of floors that the elevator could serve, and it was
Speaker 1: it would skip all the other floors, which, if it's
Speaker 1: high enough, means it's almost guaranteed to make your ears
Speaker 1: go pop. Yeah, yeah, it's always fun. All right. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about elevator accidents, which I had not planned
Speaker 1: on talking about, but I sent out the message on
Speaker 1: Twitter before we record this podcast and receive a request
Speaker 1: from Nannie, and Nannie says, always see elevators crashing on
Speaker 1: TV and movies. Has it ever happened in real life?
Speaker 1: The ord answer is yes, it has a lot. Not
Speaker 1: a lot. Let's not say a lot, Laurence. We work
Speaker 1: in a building where there's an elevator, it doesn't happen
Speaker 1: a lot. It has happened over the course of history.
Speaker 1: It's happened a few times, right now. Let me there's
Speaker 1: a lot of news stories about it. They're kind of
Speaker 1: gruesome that the stories are awful, which make it seem
Speaker 1: like a like a lot um and and and even
Speaker 1: you could argue one time is too many, and I
Speaker 1: would not argue against that, because obviously you're talking about
Speaker 1: people's lives, and I treat that very seriously. But no, no,
Speaker 1: I mean, in the grand scheme of the universe, a
Speaker 1: very few elevator accidents happen these days. Yeah, let me
Speaker 1: give you a statistic. According to the U. S. Bureau
Speaker 1: of Labor Statistics and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the
Speaker 1: estimate is that elevator accidents caused twenty seven deaths per year. However,
Speaker 1: elevators make about eighteen billion passenger trips per year, So
Speaker 1: out of eighteen billion trips of taking people up and
Speaker 1: down floors, seven people die, and out of those number
Speaker 1: the most The most frequent victims of elevator accidents are
Speaker 1: maintenance workers, people who are working in elevator shafts to
Speaker 1: fix it right, and someone has failed to enact the
Speaker 1: proper safety features to prevent an elevator from moving up
Speaker 1: and down while the maintenance work is being done. That's tragic,
Speaker 1: but that does seem to happen the most frequently. Behind
Speaker 1: that behind maintenance workers are people who, for some reason
Speaker 1: or other choose to get out of an elevator car
Speaker 1: while it's in a shaft and either in an attempt
Speaker 1: to escape a car that has been stuck, or to
Speaker 1: do something like elevator surfing, which is an incredibly stupid
Speaker 1: thing to do. You do, do not do just because
Speaker 1: you see that happening like die Hard does not mean
Speaker 1: that it's a good idea. No, don't do it. It's
Speaker 1: it's almost it's almost a guarantee for severe injury, if
Speaker 1: not death. Don't do it. Uh. Elevators in reality do
Speaker 1: not work the way you see them in movies. The
Speaker 1: elevator chefs are dark, they're nasty. Everything is covered in
Speaker 1: in in oil and grease because it has to be
Speaker 1: lubricated to allow elevators to pass and uh, and they
Speaker 1: cramped the same the same way that air events do
Speaker 1: not perfectly fit a human person or two human people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was very disappointed to find that air events don't
Speaker 1: come in Bruce Willis size, like it's not just a standard. Um,
Speaker 1: it was very disappointing to me. Yeah, the same same principles.
Speaker 1: Elevator chefs are not fun places to hang out. Yeah. So, um,
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about some actual accidents, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and and so so so so some some of these
Speaker 1: accidents are caused by the way that the doors work
Speaker 1: in modern elevators. Um, there's usually a motion sensor that
Speaker 1: prevents them from closing if someone is standing in the way.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that you've seen that. And I want to
Speaker 1: mention before we really get into this, some of these
Speaker 1: descriptions could turn out to be a bit gruesome. So
Speaker 1: if that is something that does bother you, I would
Speaker 1: completely understand if you end listening to the podcast right
Speaker 1: now and wait for our next episode, where we'll probably
Speaker 1: talk about puppies. But um, because I'm gonna need something
Speaker 1: after this people. But yeah, maybe we'll talk about some
Speaker 1: of those robotic dogs or something. But but yes, we
Speaker 1: are going to talk about some some fairly famous accidents
Speaker 1: and uh and not and and they're they're not they're
Speaker 1: not pleased. I've actually got them by chronological order. So
Speaker 1: before we get into any other ones, specifically about the doors.
Speaker 1: All right, so we're back. Uh. This is not the
Speaker 1: first time there was an elevator accident. It's just the
Speaker 1: first one that I took a I listed. UM, I
Speaker 1: did a kind of a search for elevator accidents in general,
Speaker 1: and then picked a few. In eighteen nine, U. S.
Speaker 1: Congressman Isaac Jordan's died after he stepped into an open
Speaker 1: elevator shaft. What had happened was he had called an elevator. UH.
Speaker 1: He was talking with a friend of his when the
Speaker 1: doors had opened the elevator. He essentially spent too long
Speaker 1: speaking to his friend. The elevator then moved changed floors,
Speaker 1: but the doors failed to close, and so the Congressman Jordan's,
Speaker 1: upon concluding his conversation with his friends, stepped back into
Speaker 1: what he thought was the elevator but was in fact
Speaker 1: an open elevator shaft, and he fell to his death. UH.
Speaker 1: Nineteen o three in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Uh, this was one
Speaker 1: of those cases where it was UM, the the accident
Speaker 1: was was due to the behavior of the passengers, because
Speaker 1: not in not every case is it's something where there's
Speaker 1: a mechanical failure. Because the elevator itself was poorly maintained.
Speaker 1: In this case, there was a big conference that was
Speaker 1: going on in Pittsburgh, and uh, there were all these
Speaker 1: people in this one building and seventeen of them crowded
Speaker 1: into an elevator that was designed to carry at maximum
Speaker 1: like ten people. Seventeen people crowded into this elevator and
Speaker 1: in the Donnelly Building in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the elevator
Speaker 1: fell six stories and then the cable and assembly fell
Speaker 1: on top of the elevator. Yeah, because it was it
Speaker 1: was too much weight, and it pulled the whole thing down.
Speaker 1: Four people out of the seventeen died, so the others survived, injured,
Speaker 1: but they were survived. They survived. And again the accident
Speaker 1: was blamed on the fact that too many people crowded
Speaker 1: into the elevator at once. And this is part of
Speaker 1: why there are floor sensors and most elevators these days,
Speaker 1: which we'll we'll do that really high pitched annoying dinging
Speaker 1: thing if you or buzz or whatever when you load
Speaker 1: too many people onto an elevator and telling you to
Speaker 1: get some that weight out of there because it is
Speaker 1: too much, right, and and the elevators these days, almost
Speaker 1: all the ones that have this system, and that's they will, right.
Speaker 1: And I've I've been in elevators that have done that.
Speaker 1: I mean, while while we're on this topic, I just
Speaker 1: wanted to mention I kind of meant to mention it
Speaker 1: back when we were talking about computers. But um, but
Speaker 1: when you if you're trying really hard to get somewhere
Speaker 1: on an elevator and the eleva leaders are very busy,
Speaker 1: only press the direction that you want to go. Because
Speaker 1: the computer systems actually pretty advanced. It knows what it's
Speaker 1: doing and it can do its job better if you
Speaker 1: tell it what you need. Don't here, don't here, don't
Speaker 1: keep both up and down if you're playing on going up. Correct.
Speaker 1: I had to have a little levity in there because
Speaker 1: some of the other accidents are just so awful. Here's
Speaker 1: here's one that's a remarkable story and remarkable for multiple reasons.
Speaker 1: It's both awful and amazing at the same time. Um.
Speaker 1: That was the year when a bent Fi bomber flown
Speaker 1: by Lieutenant Colonel William Franklin Smith Jr. Uh was flying
Speaker 1: through a heavy fog bank missed the airport landing strip,
Speaker 1: and instead crashed into the north face of the Empire
Speaker 1: State Building. Goodness, yeah, not many people know about this
Speaker 1: accident compared to uh, the the the terrorist attack on
Speaker 1: nine eleven, which obviously there are parallels, right, but this
Speaker 1: was this was an aviation accident. It wasn't done, it
Speaker 1: wasn't a purposeful attack. But yes, it slammed into the
Speaker 1: north side of the Empire State Building and among the
Speaker 1: people who were injured was a woman named Betty Lou
Speaker 1: Oliver who was an elevator attendant and she was on
Speaker 1: the seventy five floor at the time. She was knocked
Speaker 1: down and she was burned by jet fuel essentially airplane fuel,
Speaker 1: and so firefighters were able to put the fire out
Speaker 1: in about forty minutes. I think it was the highest
Speaker 1: fire any firefighters have been able to uh to extinguish.
Speaker 1: And then the rescuers they found Oliver and they knew
Speaker 1: that they needed to get her to an ambulance, so
Speaker 1: they put her in an elevator, but that elevator had
Speaker 1: been weakened. The elevator doors closed, and then the cable
Speaker 1: snapped and the elevator plummeted seventy five floors, landed on
Speaker 1: the crash pad, then the assembly and cable hit on
Speaker 1: top of it. She survived, They pulled her out of
Speaker 1: the rubble she was, she survived and they were able
Speaker 1: to get her to the hospital. Yeah. Pretty insane at
Speaker 1: any rate. So these were all early accidents, uh, and
Speaker 1: accidents still happen. Part of the reason why a lot
Speaker 1: of the safety features that exist today have been put
Speaker 1: into place, right exactly that these accidents showed that there
Speaker 1: were other safety measures that needed to be there, and
Speaker 1: once in a while, uh rarely an accident still happens,
Speaker 1: maybe you know, involving the elevator doors or some other system.
Speaker 1: But the important thing to remember is that uh that
Speaker 1: you know, eighteen billion trips is that's a lot of trips,
Speaker 1: and so they are phenomenally safe. It's just that when
Speaker 1: you hear about the accidents, they seem they seem, uh,
Speaker 1: they capture our imagination, right, It's I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: one of those things that that can easily overwhelm a
Speaker 1: person and you can start concentrating on it too much.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like getting into a plane, this this
Speaker 1: idea that you're giving up control. Um, But but we
Speaker 1: should you know, I definitely want to stress that the
Speaker 1: elevators that are in use today, especially the ones that
Speaker 1: are in public buildings where they have to undergo regular
Speaker 1: uh investigations, a regular regular maintenance and share checkups, you know,
Speaker 1: all of that sort of stuff, are remarkably safe. Yes,
Speaker 1: and and also furthermore, um, the lessons that we can
Speaker 1: take away from from some of the things that we
Speaker 1: did not mention that have happened more recently are just
Speaker 1: that if you if you are stuck in an elevator,
Speaker 1: I myself been stuck in an elevator for not too long,
Speaker 1: maybe half an hour or so. Um. If if that happens,
Speaker 1: you know, don't don't panic. There's usually call box in there.
Speaker 1: Use that. Also, don't try to pry open the doors yourself,
Speaker 1: and and don't try to uh to leap dramatically action
Speaker 1: hero style out of the elevator if it if it
Speaker 1: seems like bad things are happening, probably bad things are
Speaker 1: not happening, And you have more likelihood of um, of
Speaker 1: getting caught in in a door mechanism and injured that
Speaker 1: way than you do of the elevator actually falling right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's um, you know, it's it's definitely one of those
Speaker 1: things where a lot of the deaths and injuries could
Speaker 1: be avoided if people follow the proper safety protocols. Uh,
Speaker 1: specifically with the maintenance workers. Um, it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's technology. Sometimes technology fails, but but I would
Speaker 1: say that it's one of the most reliable ones that
Speaker 1: we have out there. Uh. And of course, remember where
Speaker 1: humans really bad at factoring in odds, So things like,
Speaker 1: you know, the odds of of operating a vehicle safely
Speaker 1: are actually worse than the odds of having a safe
Speaker 1: flying and which are you know, the same like taking
Speaker 1: an elevator ride safely. So I don't want to make
Speaker 1: everyone feel like they have to the stairs from here
Speaker 1: on out. That's not the case. It's very healthy. It
Speaker 1: can be unless you're at the top of the seventieth floor,
Speaker 1: in which case you kind of have to pack a lunch.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's it's definitely that's not the message
Speaker 1: that we're trying to send here. Certainly not all right, Well, uh,
Speaker 1: thank you for that question, nanny. You've taught me a
Speaker 1: valuable lesson, and that is not googling elevator accidents. No,
Speaker 1: I read way more than what I described, and uh,
Speaker 1: and and yeah, it's there's no point in going over it.
Speaker 1: These are all the exceptions, and uh, there's nothing but
Speaker 1: just it's just disturbing. But it turns out again like
Speaker 1: these are all exceptions, not the rule. So um, yeah,
Speaker 1: don't be terrified. All right, I'm glad that I've stressed that. Now, Guys,
Speaker 1: if you have any questions, any comments, any suggestions for
Speaker 1: future episodes of tech Stuff, I highly recommend you get
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