The Invention of the Elevator Brake Made Skyscrapers Possible

The Invention of the Elevator Brake Made Skyscrapers Possible

Elisha Graves Otis didn't invent the elevator, he invented something perhaps more important---the elevator brake-which made skyscrapers a practical reality.

Born on a farm near Halifax, Vermont, the youngest of six children, Otis made several attempts at establishing businesses in his early years. However, chronically poor health led to continual financial woes. Finally, in 1845, he tried to change his luck with a move to Albany, New York. There he worked as a master mechanic in the bedstead factory of O. Tingley & Company. He remained about three years and during that time invented and put into use a railway safety brake, which could be controlled by the engineer, and ingenious devices to run rails for four-poster beds and to improve the operation of turbine wheels.

From ancient times through the Middle Ages, and into the 13th century, man or animal power was the driving force behind hoisting devices.

By 1850 steam and hydraulic elevators had been introduced, but it was in 1852 that the landmark event in elevator history occurred: the invention of the world's first safety elevator by Elisha Graves Otis. By 1852 he had moved to Yonkers, New York, to organize and install machinery for the bedstead firm of Maize & Burns, which was expanding. Josiah Maize needed a hoist to lift heavy equipment to the upper floor. Although hoists were not new, Otis' inventive nature had been piqued because of the equipment's safety problem. The problem was to make a hoist that wouldn't fall. He found the answer with a tough, steel wagon spring meshing with a ratchet. If the rope gave way, the spring would catch and hold.

In 1854 Otis dramatized his safety device on the floor of the Crystal Palace Exposition in New York. With a large audience on hand, the inventor ascended in an elevator cradled in an open-sided shaft. Halfway up, he had the hoisting cable cut with an axe. The platform held up and the elevator industry was good to go. This safety device changed the face of the globe by making things move up and down easily. This helped make skyscrapers a reality.

The first passenger elevator was installed by Otis in New York in 1857. After Otis' death in 1861, his sons, Charles and Norton, built on his heritage, creating Otis Brothers & Co.