The electrically operated vehicles that take people and loads from one floor of a building to another are called elevators.
The first simple devices in history that could be called elevators were invented thousands of years ago in Ancient Greece. These assemblies were moved upwards by pulling ropes wrapped around a drum using human or animal power. These mechanisms, which cannot be considered very safe, have been used for carrying loads for many years.
By the 1750s, steam power was used instead of human or animal power to move the elevators. In these elevators, the steam engine was rotating a drum, and the rope pulling the elevator cabin was wound on this drum. The first steam-powered elevators were used in 1754 to remove ice sheets from the Hudson River in the USA. However, the elevators still could not be used to transport people because of the risk of breaking the ropes. That would have to wait another hundred years.
US inventor Elisha Otis made elevators safe for people by inventing a safety brake that would kick in when needed to prevent the car from falling. In 1853, Otis proved his confidence in his invention before a large number of people at a fair in New York. Otis stood on a high floor on an open platform and asked his assistant to cut the rope supporting the platform. The rope was cut in the face of the anxious gaze of the crowd watching him. However, neither the platform crashed to the ground nor anything happened to Otis. Otis greeted people by waving his hat on the platform, which did not move thanks to the brake system.
Otis, who received many orders due to this invention, started the production of “safe elevators”. The first steam-powered passenger elevator was installed in a department store in New York in 1857. This elevator could go up five floors in one minute. By 1873, more than 2,000 Otis elevators were in use in office buildings, hotels, apartments and department stores.
From the 1880s, elevators started to work with electricity. In 1895, he added two British counterweight systems called Frost and Strutt to these elevators, which go higher than their predecessors. Thus, it became possible to carry more loads using less energy.
Today, the fastest elevator in the world is the elevator installed in the 830-meter-high Burj Khalifa building in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The highest speed this elevator can reach is 64 kilometers per hour.
