AI transcript
0:00:11 “Pushkin.”
0:00:16 When I told the editor of this show that I was thinking of doing an episode about elevators,
0:00:19 she said, “Why?”
0:00:22 Which fair question.
0:00:25 It’s a little bit different than what we usually do on the show.
0:00:33 But the elevator is this little box that’s full of interesting ideas about technology
0:00:37 and design and innovation and human behavior.
0:00:40 The elevator made the modern city possible.
0:00:42 No elevators, no skyscrapers.
0:00:48 And today, people are working on entirely new kinds of elevators that can go higher
0:00:49 and faster than ever.
0:01:00 And that can also not only go up and down, but can also go sideways.
0:01:02 I’m Jacob Goldstein, and this is What’s Your Problem.
0:01:05 My guest today is Lee Gray.
0:01:11 He’s a professor of architectural history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
0:01:17 And as far as we can tell, he’s the world’s leading historian of the elevator.
0:01:22 I started the conversation with Lee in the same place that people always start the story
0:01:24 of the modern elevator.
0:01:33 New York City, 1853, when an engineer and inventor named Elijah Otis stood on an open elevator
0:01:35 platform in front of a crowd.
0:01:40 A rope hoisted the elevator high up into the air, so Otis was sort of dangling there in
0:01:42 front of the crowd.
0:01:49 And then a guy Otis had hired, took an axe, and cut the rope that held the elevator up.
0:01:53 The elevator fell a couple feet, and then it stopped.
0:01:57 The safety break that Otis had invented worked perfectly.
0:02:04 He called out, “All safe,” and the crowd, one imagines, went wild.
0:02:07 Lee kind of sighed, frankly, when I brought this story up.
0:02:14 And he told me, “Yes, that story is true as far as it goes, but it’s incomplete.
0:02:18 And it’s incomplete in the way that stories about lone inventors and Eureka moments are
0:02:20 almost always incomplete.”
0:02:26 A critical part of the story that’s often omitted is this was designed for a freight elevator.
0:02:31 When he demonstrates his safety, there is no such thing as a passenger elevator as we
0:02:32 know it today.
0:02:34 That hasn’t been imagined yet.
0:02:36 It was literally an open platform.
0:02:41 There was no car, there were no walls, there was no enclosure on it.
0:02:49 So it was, yes, a very clever and much needed safety device, but for a much different problem
0:02:52 than that of a passenger elevator.
0:02:59 The safety was designed that it was held in place by a spring, and the weight of the platform
0:03:02 held the spring in place when it was attached to the hoisting rope.
0:03:10 When the hoisting rope broke, the spring then pushed down and then from the car pushed out
0:03:15 two iron bars that engaged the teeth of the guide rails.
0:03:19 And the minute they hit the teeth, the platform stopped moving.
0:03:24 So it’s essentially an emergency break that’s designed to activate if the rope should break.
0:03:28 Yes, that’s a very good analogy.
0:03:33 So Elijah Otis invented this safety break for the industrial elevator, and that is in
0:03:40 fact the same Otis who is tied to the Otis elevator company today, we should mention.
0:03:46 But now, in our story, we need someone to come along and invent the passenger elevator,
0:03:48 this thing we know as the elevator.
0:03:50 Tell me about that part.
0:03:58 The first person that I am aware of to conceptualize and articulate the modern passenger elevator
0:04:04 and this is where it gets complicated because for his first name was Otis, last name Tufts.
0:04:05 That’s so complicated.
0:04:07 We can call him Tufts and the other guy, Otis.
0:04:19 So Boston engineer Tufts patents in 1859, an elevator specifically designed for passengers
0:04:26 with an enclosed car to protect the passengers, automatically operating doors, not quite sure
0:04:34 how well they worked, and the idea of an operator there to run the elevator for the passengers.
0:04:38 But it was also a very specific conception of an elevator car because it was designed
0:04:44 for use in the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York, which was one of these grand urban hotels.
0:04:48 So the elevator car included benches for the passengers.
0:04:51 They could sit down and relax before the car moved.
0:04:56 And so Tufts very clearly articulated for the first time, here are all the components
0:04:59 of a passenger elevator.
0:05:04 What he also did was propose a technological solution that really didn’t make much sense
0:05:09 because it was so expensive because he said, well, you know, the problem with elevators
0:05:13 is the cable is going to break and the elevator car will fall down.
0:05:14 So he got rid of the cable.
0:05:19 And what he proposed and in fact did in the Fifth Avenue Hotel is he constructed this
0:05:25 massive vertical screw for lack of a better definition that ran from the basement to the
0:05:26 top of the building.
0:05:30 The elevator cars attached to the screw like a nut on a bolt.
0:05:36 The screw turns, the elevator car rises and it goes up and goes down very, very slowly.
0:05:41 It was insanely complicated from a technological solution that made no sense.
0:05:43 Only two of these were ever built.
0:05:49 So this is an example of he got all of what we want in a passenger elevator in terms of
0:05:50 its concept.
0:05:56 He’s just got the technology really, really wrong, but he established the paradigm that
0:06:02 others, Otis, among them picked up and said, OK, now we know what, you know, the difference
0:06:05 between a freight elevator and a passenger elevator.
0:06:08 A lot of it is the car to keep passengers safe.
0:06:13 So we want Tufts box, Tufts room that goes up and down.
0:06:18 And we want Otis’s safety mechanism, basically, like it seems like the combination of those
0:06:24 two is what gives us, in the middle of the 1800s, the passenger elevator.
0:06:26 That is not so different as we know it today.
0:06:27 Right.
0:06:28 Yes.
0:06:35 In terms of many of its fundamental features and the concern for safety that Otis expressed
0:06:41 with this freight elevator, that is one constant that the elevator industry has never lost
0:06:46 sight of and is always at the forefront of everything they do.
0:06:53 So we have this elevator that is Tufts box plus Otis’s safety device, basically, right?
0:07:03 And so you have this moment in the 1800s when elevators and skyscrapers are kind of emerging
0:07:05 into the world together, right?
0:07:08 And this is a really elegant, interesting story.
0:07:14 So can you just talk about the relationship between the elevator as this innovation and
0:07:17 the skyscraper as this related innovation?
0:07:19 How do they sort of co-evolve?
0:07:28 So very quickly leading into that, throughout the 1860s, we only find passenger elevators
0:07:33 in large German hotels or very posh department stores.
0:07:39 It’s a luxury item, not predicated on speed, predicated on I-Enter, I have a seat, I’m
0:07:44 in a cushion seat, there’s mirrors in the car, the gas chandeliers, this is elegant
0:07:48 little room that takes me very slowly to my destination because it’s about luxury, it’s
0:07:49 not about speed.
0:07:52 Is it also sort of about technology?
0:08:02 Is it about like I’m rich and I’m experiencing the modern marvels of my age?
0:08:03 That’s a very good point.
0:08:08 In the large urban hotel, they were known for having all of the latest technological
0:08:09 amenities.
0:08:15 So in that sense, yes, this is this powerful new technology.
0:08:21 But the critical thing, I think, is it’s not about speed, it’s about luxury.
0:08:26 When it makes the jump into the first tall office buildings in the 1870s, beginning in
0:08:33 1870, in fact, that’s when the idea of speed suddenly gets introduced because every business
0:08:40 person recognizes, well, you know, I don’t want to go into a seven-story office building
0:08:44 and go in and have a seat and sit down and it takes me forever to get upstairs when I
0:08:46 could walk up the stairs more quickly.
0:08:50 The whole point of this technology is to move me more quickly.
0:08:59 And so as the skyscraper moves through the 19th century, one way to describe it is, we
0:09:03 always hear the passenger elevator makes the skyscraper possible.
0:09:04 True.
0:09:10 Also, the desire to have a skyscraper made the modern elevator possible.
0:09:16 I need both because I look at the first elevators, steam-powered, they could go seven, eight floors
0:09:21 without too much trouble, and there’s a desire to build taller buildings.
0:09:27 Then hydraulic elevators come into play of specific designs that can easily do 10, 15,
0:09:29 20, 25 stories.
0:09:33 Then we get to the close of the 19th century, I want to go higher still, I need a different
0:09:37 technology, then the electric traction elevator is developed.
0:09:42 So in each of those phases, it’s a question of, well, did the elevator technology drive
0:09:47 the height, or did the desire to go taller drive the technology?
0:09:54 I mean, it seems like the first enabling idea you need is just the idea of an elevator,
0:09:55 right?
0:10:01 If you have the idea of an elevator, nobody’s going to say, can you get me a better elevator,
0:10:02 right?
0:10:05 People are just going to assume that the height of a building is constrained by the number
0:10:08 of flights of steps people will walk up.
0:10:09 Right.
0:10:10 True.
0:10:11 And that’s a very good point.
0:10:17 Yes, once the idea is there, then it’s really interesting how it is considered.
0:10:20 Then it’s like, well, surely if you could take me up seven floors, you could take me
0:10:23 up another seven floors, another seven.
0:10:31 So what, like, by, say, 1900, by the early 1900s, how tall are buildings?
0:10:36 Oh, in New York, that’s a good question.
0:10:39 I mean, the Woolworth building is the one I always think of.
0:10:40 I was looking that one up.
0:10:45 I think it’s on the order of 60 stories, like, very tall, even today, not the tallest.
0:10:48 But like, you look at that building today and you’re not like, oh, that’s a tiny little
0:10:49 building.
0:10:50 Like, that’s a big building.
0:10:53 You walk up all those steps.
0:11:00 And it does seem, it does seem like, I understand that with your knowledge, you don’t see it
0:11:02 as this one kind of step function change.
0:11:07 There was like a really slow elevator that was like a luxury box to be fancy and take
0:11:08 you up six stories.
0:11:11 And then there was a better one that could do 20.
0:11:15 But in a relatively short period of time, we go from, I don’t know, how tall were tall
0:11:16 buildings before elevators?
0:11:18 Six stories, seven stories?
0:11:26 Five to maybe six, and of course, the top floor was the cheapest to rent.
0:11:27 Right.
0:11:28 Right.
0:11:29 There’s also that, right?
0:11:30 Because you have to schlep up all the steps.
0:11:34 And so if you can afford it, you live on the ground, and that’s going to get inverted,
0:11:35 which is fun, right?
0:11:36 If you’re rich, you get to live up top.
0:11:41 But there is this, at least at our distance, this change, right?
0:11:45 You go from 1850, no elevator, a tall building is six stories.
0:11:51 By the early 1900s, elevators are quite good and safe.
0:11:54 And you’ve gone up in the height of buildings by 10x, right?
0:11:58 You’ve gone up to buildings of something like 60 stories.
0:12:03 And you have what looks like a modern city, like, yes, it’s not glass and steel yet and
0:12:04 it’s not as tall.
0:12:11 But it’s the basic idea of, say, Manhattan to pick one is in place.
0:12:17 And we did not have another step function of that magnitude, right?
0:12:20 We went from six to 60 in that 50-ish years.
0:12:24 We didn’t go from 60 to 600.
0:12:25 We’re not even close, right?
0:12:27 The tallest buildings in the world now are 100 in some stories.
0:12:30 And that’s interesting to me.
0:12:33 I mean, I feel like the biggest move was that first one.
0:12:35 Do you buy it?
0:12:36 Yeah.
0:12:41 Yes, I think that’s a very good observation.
0:12:48 But what that also speaks to is the electric traction elevator perfected in the first couple
0:12:54 of decades of the 20th century remains the dominant elevator type.
0:13:01 What everyone is waiting on is a cable-less elevator, possibly driven by maglev technology
0:13:04 or something very similar.
0:13:12 And because right now, we’re limited by the length and actually weight of the steel cables.
0:13:19 Once we get rid of the cables and we can do it with the same speed and efficiency of the
0:13:26 current traction elevator, that’s the next jump where suddenly 150, 200 stories, if we
0:13:32 wanted to, would be possible.
0:13:35 I want to talk more about that.
0:13:37 But there’s a few things I want to discuss first.
0:13:44 So there are a few things that have happened, obviously, in elevators in the last 100 years.
0:13:54 One of them that is interesting to me is the advent of what today we might call the driverless
0:14:00 car elevator, the driverless elevator car, let’s say, right in this era when we keep
0:14:04 feeling like maybe we’re about to get to driverless cars, but everybody’s really nervous about
0:14:05 it.
0:14:08 There is this interesting moment when that happens with elevators.
0:14:13 Tell me about the advent of the driverless elevator car.
0:14:18 And that is a critical pivot point that occurs in the 1950s.
0:14:26 So prior to what the industry called the operatorless elevator or driverless elevator, if you will,
0:14:32 all elevators had operators, even ones with push buttons that you or I could have walked
0:14:33 in and pushed a button.
0:14:39 The reason the operator remains in the car until the 1950s is it has to do with traffic
0:14:40 control.
0:14:47 So in a large building, let’s say the building has 20 elevators, it’s a 40-story building
0:14:52 and 10 elevators serve half the floors, 10 serve the other half.
0:14:59 Elevator traffic control was conducted and organized by an individual called a starter.
0:15:04 He was charged with organizing the elevator operators and at the beginning of the day
0:15:10 and throughout the day as needed, giving them a sign, either a literal sign by pointing
0:15:15 at them or by pushing a button that would activate a light in their car, controlling elevator
0:15:19 traffic in the building so that it met the needs of the building.
0:15:24 We get everybody up.
0:15:29 That’s a very good analogy and we’re dependent on the human brain to do that until we get
0:15:36 to the early 1950s when we get the first automated systems that will manage that you can, for
0:15:42 lack of a better word, program into preset programs so that the elevators automatically
0:15:44 do what we want them to do.
0:15:50 And as soon as I can do that reliably, I don’t need the operator anymore and therefore I
0:15:56 can get rid of them because I’ve literally automated the movement of elevators.
0:16:01 So this is the real estate point of view and the elevator point of view.
0:16:09 What is the elevator rider, the civilian point of view on this shift toward automated elevators?
0:16:10 Were people scared?
0:16:12 Were they not scared?
0:16:17 So Leverhouse in New York City, one of the first all-glass skyscrapers, was one of the
0:16:23 first buildings to have fully automated elevators, no operators.
0:16:27 There are documented stories of when the building opened, everybody was really excited, this
0:16:33 new modern building of users going in the building, stepping into the elevator car and
0:16:37 stepping right back out saying, “Where’s the guy who’s supposed to run this?”
0:16:44 Because they were clearly disconcerted that, “So there’s no one here, I am on my own.”
0:16:48 And I mean, people got over that pretty quickly, but there was a moment where it’s like, “Well,
0:16:53 wait a minute, I pushed the button really all by myself.”
0:16:59 And I mean, it didn’t take long, but there was a learning curve because it was such an
0:17:01 expected part of the experience.
0:17:06 There’s this uniformed person there who all I have to do is say, “Five, please,” and
0:17:09 they take care of it for me.
0:17:14 Are there any lessons from that transition to driverless elevator cars that might be
0:17:17 useful for the transition to driverless cars?
0:17:21 Like, did they change the user interface at all?
0:17:25 Did they add any buttons to try and make people feel better?
0:17:30 I am not aware of any of any change in buttons, but you did make me think of something that
0:17:32 I haven’t thought of before.
0:17:38 When I’ve got an operator in there running the car, also the presence of the operator,
0:17:46 I think, produced a very specific social dynamic because there’s someone in charge in the car.
0:17:52 So I go in, when there’s no one in charge, it is literally a group of strangers entering
0:17:57 a car sort of fending for themselves.
0:18:02 And that social dynamic remains one of the reasons many people don’t like elevators because
0:18:03 they’re awkward.
0:18:11 They’re weird little rooms that I’m standing way too close to somebody.
0:18:17 Still to come on the show, elevators that go sideways, elevators that go to space, and
0:18:19 escalators.
0:18:30 So here’s a question.
0:18:35 Do people want to build taller buildings now and they’re just constrained by elevators?
0:18:43 So if I wanted to, I could build a 200 story building with current technology, and I would
0:18:49 take existing technology and I could go, you know, maybe 100 floors up, get off at a sky
0:18:51 lobby, and then go another 100 floors up.
0:18:56 So if I wanted to stack 200 story buildings on top of each other, I could.
0:19:00 In fact, the World Trade Center, the original World Trade Center, which was not that tall,
0:19:01 used that technology.
0:19:06 It was essentially from an elevator point of view, two elevators stacked on top of each
0:19:08 other to get to the top of those buildings.
0:19:12 So in theory, yes, I could do that.
0:19:19 And there are some people speculating on that eventually that’s the future of urban environments,
0:19:24 massive buildings, and everybody living in large cities.
0:19:31 I’m not aware of anyone who’s put forward a serious explanation of why we would need
0:19:32 to do that.
0:19:39 Well, the interesting, like, if we go back to the sort of first chapter that, you know,
0:19:46 whatever 1850 to 1920 period call it, which is really an interesting period, you know,
0:19:50 there’s a pretty strong argument that the technological changes of that period were much
0:19:55 greater than the technological changes of the 70 years we’ve just lived through, right?
0:20:02 You go from no running water for almost everybody, no electricity, no cars, no planes, no skyscrapers,
0:20:09 like, to, you know, Manhattan in 1920 looks eminently recognizable in a way that Manhattan
0:20:11 of 1850 would not.
0:20:18 So I don’t think it would have been obvious to anyone in 1850 that Manhattan needed 60
0:20:19 story buildings.
0:20:26 And yet, 70 years later, we had them, like, what’s the, why did we hit the top if we hit
0:20:27 the top?
0:20:28 What happened?
0:20:33 Well, I mean, in the Woolworth building is a good example.
0:20:41 I think it was, it was its size because the client Woolworth wanted that building to be
0:20:42 that big.
0:20:44 It’s this is about me.
0:20:46 This is about a symbol of my commercial success.
0:20:49 This is about my ego.
0:20:57 And it’s really important to remember from an urban development point of view, at this,
0:21:02 when the passenger elevators introduced in the United States, it’s introduced into Europe
0:21:05 at exactly the same moment.
0:21:10 But all major European cities, London’s a good example, Paris certainly had very specific
0:21:11 height restrictions.
0:21:16 You couldn’t build a skyscraper in those cities if you wanted to, because it was constrained
0:21:17 by code.
0:21:21 And also there was no apparent desire to do so.
0:21:26 It was only the United States that we, you know, if someone said, well, I really want
0:21:30 to build this tall building because I want to, you know, it’s the power of my company.
0:21:36 I want to make lots of money and rent space, whatever, that we said, okay.
0:21:40 And not that there weren’t some, I mean, obviously they were gradually development of building
0:21:46 codes, but it was a lot about the ego of the individual client and the fact of the unrestrained
0:21:53 nature of American urban environments that, and that also then, and it’s still true.
0:21:57 It’s still true, but buildings aren’t getting bigger so much, right?
0:22:01 Like yes, you get a building that’s a little taller, but we have not done another 10X,
0:22:08 and yet people still have very large egos and a wish to, you know, show the world their
0:22:11 endowment in the form of the biggest building in the world.
0:22:13 But yet it’s not happening so much anymore.
0:22:15 Is it a technological thing?
0:22:22 It is an interesting point, I mean, you know, we are sort of maxed out right now in terms
0:22:23 of height.
0:22:24 Yeah, why is that?
0:22:30 Is the fact that we’re maxed out on height a product of elevator technology?
0:22:35 Are we waiting for some new elevator technology that will allow us to get buildings that are
0:22:37 profoundly bigger?
0:22:42 Right or wrong, that’s the accepted position of the industry right now, that yes, with
0:22:47 our current technology, we’re as high as we’re going to go.
0:22:53 But I don’t know, but suspect from a real estate perspective is if I had two 100-story
0:22:59 buildings stacked on top of one another, would people be willing to spend the time to get
0:23:01 up to the sky lobby?
0:23:03 200th floor, yeah.
0:23:04 Right.
0:23:06 Am I willing to take that kind of time?
0:23:07 Yeah.
0:23:10 Or the time because they have to take two elevators.
0:23:14 It’s like you got to transfer trains or something.
0:23:21 And if I had a building that size, would it be one where, and we’ve had mixed use skyscrapers
0:23:26 in the past, if I had a building that size, you know, is it one that, you know, I live
0:23:31 on, you know, 150 and I work on 75.
0:23:35 And you shop on three and you go to the gym on six.
0:23:36 And I never leave.
0:23:38 You never leave.
0:23:41 Just hope in, but fun to think about.
0:23:47 So what is the next leap in elevator technology?
0:23:49 What are people trying to solve?
0:23:50 What’s the frontier?
0:23:55 So the next leap is going to be elevators with no cables.
0:24:06 And a TK elevator has developed a system that they call multi, which uses maglev type technology.
0:24:09 Like magnets, like high speed trains.
0:24:11 So it’s floating basically in a shaft.
0:24:12 Yeah.
0:24:15 A similar kind of technology.
0:24:21 And they have developed a prototype where you would have multiple shafts in a building,
0:24:27 multiple cars running up and down in the same shaft, but also horizontal shafts, connecting
0:24:29 vertical shafts.
0:24:36 So I could go up 30 floors, maybe over 200 feet, and then up another 30 floors.
0:24:39 And like the Willy Wonka elevator.
0:24:40 Yes.
0:24:41 Yes.
0:24:42 Yes.
0:24:43 That’s, that’s yes.
0:24:44 The Willy Wonka elevator.
0:24:50 And so that system has been sort of proof of concept in a test tower in Germany.
0:24:58 It has yet to be placed in a building to really demonstrate its viability.
0:25:01 You can see YouTube videos of it in the test tower.
0:25:05 It’s really complicated technologically.
0:25:13 My question is, it’s almost something like, you know, an answer in search of a question.
0:25:19 It’s like, so, you know, I can understand maybe why we need multiple cars in a single
0:25:20 shaft.
0:25:25 I’m not quite sure why we need to move horizontally through a building.
0:25:32 And it is interesting to me that at least as far as I know thus far, there haven’t been
0:25:33 any takers.
0:25:41 No one has said, because it would be an enormous investment in a building to install a system
0:25:48 like that, just to demonstrate that yes, this is the new way.
0:25:51 But that has been a lot of research and a lot of work.
0:26:00 And when it’s perfected and there are no cables, then, you know, in theory, that 200 story
0:26:05 building gets much easier that there’s still the question of why and, you know, why we
0:26:08 would need it.
0:26:11 What about a space elevator?
0:26:18 So the space elevator is an amazing idea and very clever.
0:26:26 And it’s predicated on placing, as you may know, placing some kind of platform in geosynchronous
0:26:30 orbit so it stays above the same point on the Earth.
0:26:35 And then using, I think it’s nanocarbon fibers, if we can ever perfect how to produce that
0:26:42 many, connecting those two points, and then I can run an elevator from the Earth to this
0:26:47 satellite platform, geosynchronous orbit, probably a solar powered elevator.
0:26:53 And suddenly I can start carrying materials up to space very easily and quickly.
0:26:59 And that’s how I’m going to build the next generation of rockets and vehicles that will,
0:27:01 you know, extend our travel.
0:27:06 And presumably if you could get it built, it would be cheaper, although obviously rockets
0:27:08 have gotten much cheaper, cheaper than a rocket.
0:27:10 And it’s like a real idea, right?
0:27:12 I know nobody is actually building it.
0:27:17 But like my understanding of the physics, well, I don’t really understand the physics,
0:27:23 but my understanding of what people who understand the physics say is like, yeah, it’s like a
0:27:24 work.
0:27:25 It’s a real idea.
0:27:30 It’s a very serious idea, lots of people have spent a lot of time thinking about it
0:27:37 and questions about if there’s a delay, it’s the nanocarbon fiber issue is how do we develop
0:27:43 something that can link something in geosynchronous orbit to a place on Earth and then where do
0:27:45 we put it?
0:27:48 Because obviously we don’t want anything flying into the cable.
0:27:50 We haven’t even talked about your escalator work.
0:27:54 What’s happening with escalators?
0:27:59 So one of the projects I’m working on is a book on the history of the escalator.
0:28:07 And it is obviously related to the elevators, but it’s a very different piece of technology
0:28:09 because it’s much more visible.
0:28:14 We sort of, even though people don’t really quite know how it works, it’s magical in
0:28:20 a sense that, and here I think I would encourage everyone to remember about the first time
0:28:25 as a child they saw an escalator because it’s like, “Oh my God, the stairs are moving.”
0:28:30 In a way, sort of visually it’s cooler than an elevator, right?
0:28:32 The elevator does more work.
0:28:35 If I could only have one in the world, I’d choose the elevator.
0:28:40 But especially when the stairs appear and disappear, that’s actually the incredible part.
0:28:41 That’s the genius.
0:28:45 They’re very cool.
0:28:49 Now I will say they are much more dangerous than elevators.
0:28:58 I mean, well, falling on an escalator, they’re really well designed, but because of how we
0:29:02 have to enter and exit, it requires a little bit of coordination.
0:29:07 You can’t fall down an elevator the way you can fall down an escalator.
0:29:10 Is there a good origin story of the escalator?
0:29:11 Is there a moment?
0:29:16 Is there some genius who’s like, “We can squish the steps and then make them big again?”
0:29:29 So in a very odd, so co-insidence, the very first patent for the idea of moving steps
0:29:36 was patented on exactly the same day that Otis Tufts patented his idea or concept of
0:29:40 the passenger elevator, yes.
0:29:46 And this design was never built, but it was somebody saying, “Well, how about this?”
0:29:51 The fact that both of them were patented on the same day, that must tell us something
0:29:53 about that moment.
0:29:57 I insist that it’s not just a coincidence.
0:30:01 What do you think it tells us about what was going on?
0:30:04 Was it 1850s at that moment?
0:30:05 Yeah.
0:30:06 1859.
0:30:07 Yeah.
0:30:16 That’s a really wonderful question, and I would really have to think about it.
0:30:23 It’s this interesting pivot point, we’re right on the verge of a lot of technologies really
0:30:30 taking off, whether it’s Railroad or others.
0:30:35 I’m going to take a stab at it, I have the advantage of ignorance.
0:30:40 It’s a moment when, so the Industrial Revolution has been going on for, call it 100 years at
0:30:42 that point, right?
0:30:48 But it has been industrial, right, in the way you were talking about the elevator.
0:30:55 It has been about factories and warehouses and this very industrial setting.
0:31:01 And these are both inventions that are taking the insights, the innovations of the Industrial
0:31:07 Revolution and bringing them to the lives of ordinary people.
0:31:09 And maybe this is a moment when that is starting to happen.
0:31:13 You’re getting these grand hotels you were describing that are bringing technology.
0:31:19 You’re getting the kind of ladies paradise early department stores and industrialization
0:31:21 is becoming sort of domesticated.
0:31:28 And both the passenger elevator and the escalator maybe are manifestations of that.
0:31:32 I think that’s a very plausible, very reasonable explanation.
0:31:34 Okay, I’ll take plausible.
0:31:38 I will take plausible.
0:31:52 We’ll be back in a minute with the lightning round.
0:31:56 Okay, let’s finish, let’s finish with the lightning round.
0:32:01 Favorite elevator reference in a song?
0:32:04 Probably Aerosmith, Love and Elevator.
0:32:11 Great, favorite elevator in a movie.
0:32:15 Actually, everybody forgets about it, but it’s in the movie Speed.
0:32:19 Speed’s about a bus, am I thinking about the right movie?
0:32:25 Yes, but it’s in the first third of the movie when the elevator gets blown up.
0:32:27 Why that one?
0:32:31 Because ironically, it’s one of the few times Hollywood gets it right.
0:32:38 The cables are blown off the car and you see the safeties grab and stop the car.
0:32:41 And it’s just like, yeah, that’s what would happen.
0:32:43 Now, I guess I should call it.
0:32:51 The other one is the Willy Wonka elevator, the Johnny Depp one, not the Gene Wilder one.
0:32:59 I know an elevator is not going to go into free fall, but what is a dangerous thing that
0:33:06 I should not do on or near an elevator?
0:33:08 That’s a really good question.
0:33:13 There are many, many safety devices in place on elevators.
0:33:17 With all of those in place, what I still would probably not suggest is if the door is starting
0:33:25 to close, don’t put your arm in that gap, thinking the door will automatically rebound.
0:33:30 It should, but I wouldn’t do that or put your foot in the gap.
0:33:33 How many articles have you written for Elevator World Magazine?
0:33:36 Over 250.
0:33:39 Have you ever been stuck in an elevator?
0:33:40 Almost, but no.
0:33:44 I had an elevator once that stopped and I thought, okay, this is my first experience
0:33:46 and then it started moving again.
0:33:48 So no, I haven’t had that experience yet.
0:33:51 Were you kind of disappointed when it started moving again?
0:33:52 A little bit, yeah.
0:33:57 I mean, I feel like if you’re you, you kind of in a controlled way want to be stuck on
0:34:00 an elevator once for not too long.
0:34:07 The advantage, and I only know this because of what I know, is if an elevator stops moving,
0:34:12 I’m in the safest place I can be in the elevator car and then I just wait for help.
0:34:18 Have you ever, ever walked up a down escalator?
0:34:21 No.
0:34:26 Have you ever walked down an up escalator?
0:34:28 No.
0:34:32 Do you push the door close button on the elevator?
0:34:33 Sometimes.
0:34:34 Does it work?
0:34:35 I have read that it doesn’t work.
0:34:37 Is that true?
0:34:38 It works.
0:34:45 Tell me one thing I don’t know about moving sidewalks.
0:34:56 The first, okay, the first moving sidewalks were intended as urban transportation systems.
0:35:02 Like to get me from 1st Avenue to Central Park, like what does that mean?
0:35:08 So the idea would be if you went, so imagine going down into a modern subway system, but
0:35:14 instead of waiting for a subway car, moving in front of you or continuously moving in
0:35:16 front of you is a moving sidewalk.
0:35:17 Oh, I love it.
0:35:18 I love it.
0:35:19 Is it going so fast?
0:35:20 No.
0:35:27 And so the original idea was that, let’s say you would have four moving sidewalks.
0:35:33 And so the first one is moving at 1.5 feet per minute, the second one at three, the next
0:35:34 one at four.
0:35:38 So I can get on the first one from a standstill and then I can sort of accelerate by getting
0:35:43 on to subsequent moving sidewalks, and then I want a moving sidewalk that’s just like jamming
0:35:44 along.
0:35:45 Yes.
0:35:46 That sounds so fun.
0:35:51 I mean, it doesn’t seem like a good idea, but it seems fun.
0:35:59 One example that was built that you can actually see in operation, the 1900 Paris Exposition,
0:36:05 there was a moving sidewalk system like that that went around a large part of the exposition
0:36:08 grounds and it was filmed.
0:36:14 And if you Google Moving Sidewalk Paris, you can watch movies of people getting on and
0:36:19 off and it’s hysterical.
0:36:25 Lee Gray is a professor of architectural history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
0:36:28 Today’s show was produced by Gabriel Hunter Chang.
0:36:33 It was edited by Lydia Jean Cotte and engineered by Sarah Bouguere.
0:36:36 You can email us at problem@pushkin.fm.
0:36:37 I’m Jacob Goldstein.
0:36:40 We’ll be back next week with another episode of What’s Your Problem?
0:36:46 [MUSIC PLAYING]
0:36:49 (upbeat music)
0:36:59 [BLANK_AUDIO]
0:00:16 When I told the editor of this show that I was thinking of doing an episode about elevators,
0:00:19 she said, “Why?”
0:00:22 Which fair question.
0:00:25 It’s a little bit different than what we usually do on the show.
0:00:33 But the elevator is this little box that’s full of interesting ideas about technology
0:00:37 and design and innovation and human behavior.
0:00:40 The elevator made the modern city possible.
0:00:42 No elevators, no skyscrapers.
0:00:48 And today, people are working on entirely new kinds of elevators that can go higher
0:00:49 and faster than ever.
0:01:00 And that can also not only go up and down, but can also go sideways.
0:01:02 I’m Jacob Goldstein, and this is What’s Your Problem.
0:01:05 My guest today is Lee Gray.
0:01:11 He’s a professor of architectural history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
0:01:17 And as far as we can tell, he’s the world’s leading historian of the elevator.
0:01:22 I started the conversation with Lee in the same place that people always start the story
0:01:24 of the modern elevator.
0:01:33 New York City, 1853, when an engineer and inventor named Elijah Otis stood on an open elevator
0:01:35 platform in front of a crowd.
0:01:40 A rope hoisted the elevator high up into the air, so Otis was sort of dangling there in
0:01:42 front of the crowd.
0:01:49 And then a guy Otis had hired, took an axe, and cut the rope that held the elevator up.
0:01:53 The elevator fell a couple feet, and then it stopped.
0:01:57 The safety break that Otis had invented worked perfectly.
0:02:04 He called out, “All safe,” and the crowd, one imagines, went wild.
0:02:07 Lee kind of sighed, frankly, when I brought this story up.
0:02:14 And he told me, “Yes, that story is true as far as it goes, but it’s incomplete.
0:02:18 And it’s incomplete in the way that stories about lone inventors and Eureka moments are
0:02:20 almost always incomplete.”
0:02:26 A critical part of the story that’s often omitted is this was designed for a freight elevator.
0:02:31 When he demonstrates his safety, there is no such thing as a passenger elevator as we
0:02:32 know it today.
0:02:34 That hasn’t been imagined yet.
0:02:36 It was literally an open platform.
0:02:41 There was no car, there were no walls, there was no enclosure on it.
0:02:49 So it was, yes, a very clever and much needed safety device, but for a much different problem
0:02:52 than that of a passenger elevator.
0:02:59 The safety was designed that it was held in place by a spring, and the weight of the platform
0:03:02 held the spring in place when it was attached to the hoisting rope.
0:03:10 When the hoisting rope broke, the spring then pushed down and then from the car pushed out
0:03:15 two iron bars that engaged the teeth of the guide rails.
0:03:19 And the minute they hit the teeth, the platform stopped moving.
0:03:24 So it’s essentially an emergency break that’s designed to activate if the rope should break.
0:03:28 Yes, that’s a very good analogy.
0:03:33 So Elijah Otis invented this safety break for the industrial elevator, and that is in
0:03:40 fact the same Otis who is tied to the Otis elevator company today, we should mention.
0:03:46 But now, in our story, we need someone to come along and invent the passenger elevator,
0:03:48 this thing we know as the elevator.
0:03:50 Tell me about that part.
0:03:58 The first person that I am aware of to conceptualize and articulate the modern passenger elevator
0:04:04 and this is where it gets complicated because for his first name was Otis, last name Tufts.
0:04:05 That’s so complicated.
0:04:07 We can call him Tufts and the other guy, Otis.
0:04:19 So Boston engineer Tufts patents in 1859, an elevator specifically designed for passengers
0:04:26 with an enclosed car to protect the passengers, automatically operating doors, not quite sure
0:04:34 how well they worked, and the idea of an operator there to run the elevator for the passengers.
0:04:38 But it was also a very specific conception of an elevator car because it was designed
0:04:44 for use in the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York, which was one of these grand urban hotels.
0:04:48 So the elevator car included benches for the passengers.
0:04:51 They could sit down and relax before the car moved.
0:04:56 And so Tufts very clearly articulated for the first time, here are all the components
0:04:59 of a passenger elevator.
0:05:04 What he also did was propose a technological solution that really didn’t make much sense
0:05:09 because it was so expensive because he said, well, you know, the problem with elevators
0:05:13 is the cable is going to break and the elevator car will fall down.
0:05:14 So he got rid of the cable.
0:05:19 And what he proposed and in fact did in the Fifth Avenue Hotel is he constructed this
0:05:25 massive vertical screw for lack of a better definition that ran from the basement to the
0:05:26 top of the building.
0:05:30 The elevator cars attached to the screw like a nut on a bolt.
0:05:36 The screw turns, the elevator car rises and it goes up and goes down very, very slowly.
0:05:41 It was insanely complicated from a technological solution that made no sense.
0:05:43 Only two of these were ever built.
0:05:49 So this is an example of he got all of what we want in a passenger elevator in terms of
0:05:50 its concept.
0:05:56 He’s just got the technology really, really wrong, but he established the paradigm that
0:06:02 others, Otis, among them picked up and said, OK, now we know what, you know, the difference
0:06:05 between a freight elevator and a passenger elevator.
0:06:08 A lot of it is the car to keep passengers safe.
0:06:13 So we want Tufts box, Tufts room that goes up and down.
0:06:18 And we want Otis’s safety mechanism, basically, like it seems like the combination of those
0:06:24 two is what gives us, in the middle of the 1800s, the passenger elevator.
0:06:26 That is not so different as we know it today.
0:06:27 Right.
0:06:28 Yes.
0:06:35 In terms of many of its fundamental features and the concern for safety that Otis expressed
0:06:41 with this freight elevator, that is one constant that the elevator industry has never lost
0:06:46 sight of and is always at the forefront of everything they do.
0:06:53 So we have this elevator that is Tufts box plus Otis’s safety device, basically, right?
0:07:03 And so you have this moment in the 1800s when elevators and skyscrapers are kind of emerging
0:07:05 into the world together, right?
0:07:08 And this is a really elegant, interesting story.
0:07:14 So can you just talk about the relationship between the elevator as this innovation and
0:07:17 the skyscraper as this related innovation?
0:07:19 How do they sort of co-evolve?
0:07:28 So very quickly leading into that, throughout the 1860s, we only find passenger elevators
0:07:33 in large German hotels or very posh department stores.
0:07:39 It’s a luxury item, not predicated on speed, predicated on I-Enter, I have a seat, I’m
0:07:44 in a cushion seat, there’s mirrors in the car, the gas chandeliers, this is elegant
0:07:48 little room that takes me very slowly to my destination because it’s about luxury, it’s
0:07:49 not about speed.
0:07:52 Is it also sort of about technology?
0:08:02 Is it about like I’m rich and I’m experiencing the modern marvels of my age?
0:08:03 That’s a very good point.
0:08:08 In the large urban hotel, they were known for having all of the latest technological
0:08:09 amenities.
0:08:15 So in that sense, yes, this is this powerful new technology.
0:08:21 But the critical thing, I think, is it’s not about speed, it’s about luxury.
0:08:26 When it makes the jump into the first tall office buildings in the 1870s, beginning in
0:08:33 1870, in fact, that’s when the idea of speed suddenly gets introduced because every business
0:08:40 person recognizes, well, you know, I don’t want to go into a seven-story office building
0:08:44 and go in and have a seat and sit down and it takes me forever to get upstairs when I
0:08:46 could walk up the stairs more quickly.
0:08:50 The whole point of this technology is to move me more quickly.
0:08:59 And so as the skyscraper moves through the 19th century, one way to describe it is, we
0:09:03 always hear the passenger elevator makes the skyscraper possible.
0:09:04 True.
0:09:10 Also, the desire to have a skyscraper made the modern elevator possible.
0:09:16 I need both because I look at the first elevators, steam-powered, they could go seven, eight floors
0:09:21 without too much trouble, and there’s a desire to build taller buildings.
0:09:27 Then hydraulic elevators come into play of specific designs that can easily do 10, 15,
0:09:29 20, 25 stories.
0:09:33 Then we get to the close of the 19th century, I want to go higher still, I need a different
0:09:37 technology, then the electric traction elevator is developed.
0:09:42 So in each of those phases, it’s a question of, well, did the elevator technology drive
0:09:47 the height, or did the desire to go taller drive the technology?
0:09:54 I mean, it seems like the first enabling idea you need is just the idea of an elevator,
0:09:55 right?
0:10:01 If you have the idea of an elevator, nobody’s going to say, can you get me a better elevator,
0:10:02 right?
0:10:05 People are just going to assume that the height of a building is constrained by the number
0:10:08 of flights of steps people will walk up.
0:10:09 Right.
0:10:10 True.
0:10:11 And that’s a very good point.
0:10:17 Yes, once the idea is there, then it’s really interesting how it is considered.
0:10:20 Then it’s like, well, surely if you could take me up seven floors, you could take me
0:10:23 up another seven floors, another seven.
0:10:31 So what, like, by, say, 1900, by the early 1900s, how tall are buildings?
0:10:36 Oh, in New York, that’s a good question.
0:10:39 I mean, the Woolworth building is the one I always think of.
0:10:40 I was looking that one up.
0:10:45 I think it’s on the order of 60 stories, like, very tall, even today, not the tallest.
0:10:48 But like, you look at that building today and you’re not like, oh, that’s a tiny little
0:10:49 building.
0:10:50 Like, that’s a big building.
0:10:53 You walk up all those steps.
0:11:00 And it does seem, it does seem like, I understand that with your knowledge, you don’t see it
0:11:02 as this one kind of step function change.
0:11:07 There was like a really slow elevator that was like a luxury box to be fancy and take
0:11:08 you up six stories.
0:11:11 And then there was a better one that could do 20.
0:11:15 But in a relatively short period of time, we go from, I don’t know, how tall were tall
0:11:16 buildings before elevators?
0:11:18 Six stories, seven stories?
0:11:26 Five to maybe six, and of course, the top floor was the cheapest to rent.
0:11:27 Right.
0:11:28 Right.
0:11:29 There’s also that, right?
0:11:30 Because you have to schlep up all the steps.
0:11:34 And so if you can afford it, you live on the ground, and that’s going to get inverted,
0:11:35 which is fun, right?
0:11:36 If you’re rich, you get to live up top.
0:11:41 But there is this, at least at our distance, this change, right?
0:11:45 You go from 1850, no elevator, a tall building is six stories.
0:11:51 By the early 1900s, elevators are quite good and safe.
0:11:54 And you’ve gone up in the height of buildings by 10x, right?
0:11:58 You’ve gone up to buildings of something like 60 stories.
0:12:03 And you have what looks like a modern city, like, yes, it’s not glass and steel yet and
0:12:04 it’s not as tall.
0:12:11 But it’s the basic idea of, say, Manhattan to pick one is in place.
0:12:17 And we did not have another step function of that magnitude, right?
0:12:20 We went from six to 60 in that 50-ish years.
0:12:24 We didn’t go from 60 to 600.
0:12:25 We’re not even close, right?
0:12:27 The tallest buildings in the world now are 100 in some stories.
0:12:30 And that’s interesting to me.
0:12:33 I mean, I feel like the biggest move was that first one.
0:12:35 Do you buy it?
0:12:36 Yeah.
0:12:41 Yes, I think that’s a very good observation.
0:12:48 But what that also speaks to is the electric traction elevator perfected in the first couple
0:12:54 of decades of the 20th century remains the dominant elevator type.
0:13:01 What everyone is waiting on is a cable-less elevator, possibly driven by maglev technology
0:13:04 or something very similar.
0:13:12 And because right now, we’re limited by the length and actually weight of the steel cables.
0:13:19 Once we get rid of the cables and we can do it with the same speed and efficiency of the
0:13:26 current traction elevator, that’s the next jump where suddenly 150, 200 stories, if we
0:13:32 wanted to, would be possible.
0:13:35 I want to talk more about that.
0:13:37 But there’s a few things I want to discuss first.
0:13:44 So there are a few things that have happened, obviously, in elevators in the last 100 years.
0:13:54 One of them that is interesting to me is the advent of what today we might call the driverless
0:14:00 car elevator, the driverless elevator car, let’s say, right in this era when we keep
0:14:04 feeling like maybe we’re about to get to driverless cars, but everybody’s really nervous about
0:14:05 it.
0:14:08 There is this interesting moment when that happens with elevators.
0:14:13 Tell me about the advent of the driverless elevator car.
0:14:18 And that is a critical pivot point that occurs in the 1950s.
0:14:26 So prior to what the industry called the operatorless elevator or driverless elevator, if you will,
0:14:32 all elevators had operators, even ones with push buttons that you or I could have walked
0:14:33 in and pushed a button.
0:14:39 The reason the operator remains in the car until the 1950s is it has to do with traffic
0:14:40 control.
0:14:47 So in a large building, let’s say the building has 20 elevators, it’s a 40-story building
0:14:52 and 10 elevators serve half the floors, 10 serve the other half.
0:14:59 Elevator traffic control was conducted and organized by an individual called a starter.
0:15:04 He was charged with organizing the elevator operators and at the beginning of the day
0:15:10 and throughout the day as needed, giving them a sign, either a literal sign by pointing
0:15:15 at them or by pushing a button that would activate a light in their car, controlling elevator
0:15:19 traffic in the building so that it met the needs of the building.
0:15:24 We get everybody up.
0:15:29 That’s a very good analogy and we’re dependent on the human brain to do that until we get
0:15:36 to the early 1950s when we get the first automated systems that will manage that you can, for
0:15:42 lack of a better word, program into preset programs so that the elevators automatically
0:15:44 do what we want them to do.
0:15:50 And as soon as I can do that reliably, I don’t need the operator anymore and therefore I
0:15:56 can get rid of them because I’ve literally automated the movement of elevators.
0:16:01 So this is the real estate point of view and the elevator point of view.
0:16:09 What is the elevator rider, the civilian point of view on this shift toward automated elevators?
0:16:10 Were people scared?
0:16:12 Were they not scared?
0:16:17 So Leverhouse in New York City, one of the first all-glass skyscrapers, was one of the
0:16:23 first buildings to have fully automated elevators, no operators.
0:16:27 There are documented stories of when the building opened, everybody was really excited, this
0:16:33 new modern building of users going in the building, stepping into the elevator car and
0:16:37 stepping right back out saying, “Where’s the guy who’s supposed to run this?”
0:16:44 Because they were clearly disconcerted that, “So there’s no one here, I am on my own.”
0:16:48 And I mean, people got over that pretty quickly, but there was a moment where it’s like, “Well,
0:16:53 wait a minute, I pushed the button really all by myself.”
0:16:59 And I mean, it didn’t take long, but there was a learning curve because it was such an
0:17:01 expected part of the experience.
0:17:06 There’s this uniformed person there who all I have to do is say, “Five, please,” and
0:17:09 they take care of it for me.
0:17:14 Are there any lessons from that transition to driverless elevator cars that might be
0:17:17 useful for the transition to driverless cars?
0:17:21 Like, did they change the user interface at all?
0:17:25 Did they add any buttons to try and make people feel better?
0:17:30 I am not aware of any of any change in buttons, but you did make me think of something that
0:17:32 I haven’t thought of before.
0:17:38 When I’ve got an operator in there running the car, also the presence of the operator,
0:17:46 I think, produced a very specific social dynamic because there’s someone in charge in the car.
0:17:52 So I go in, when there’s no one in charge, it is literally a group of strangers entering
0:17:57 a car sort of fending for themselves.
0:18:02 And that social dynamic remains one of the reasons many people don’t like elevators because
0:18:03 they’re awkward.
0:18:11 They’re weird little rooms that I’m standing way too close to somebody.
0:18:17 Still to come on the show, elevators that go sideways, elevators that go to space, and
0:18:19 escalators.
0:18:30 So here’s a question.
0:18:35 Do people want to build taller buildings now and they’re just constrained by elevators?
0:18:43 So if I wanted to, I could build a 200 story building with current technology, and I would
0:18:49 take existing technology and I could go, you know, maybe 100 floors up, get off at a sky
0:18:51 lobby, and then go another 100 floors up.
0:18:56 So if I wanted to stack 200 story buildings on top of each other, I could.
0:19:00 In fact, the World Trade Center, the original World Trade Center, which was not that tall,
0:19:01 used that technology.
0:19:06 It was essentially from an elevator point of view, two elevators stacked on top of each
0:19:08 other to get to the top of those buildings.
0:19:12 So in theory, yes, I could do that.
0:19:19 And there are some people speculating on that eventually that’s the future of urban environments,
0:19:24 massive buildings, and everybody living in large cities.
0:19:31 I’m not aware of anyone who’s put forward a serious explanation of why we would need
0:19:32 to do that.
0:19:39 Well, the interesting, like, if we go back to the sort of first chapter that, you know,
0:19:46 whatever 1850 to 1920 period call it, which is really an interesting period, you know,
0:19:50 there’s a pretty strong argument that the technological changes of that period were much
0:19:55 greater than the technological changes of the 70 years we’ve just lived through, right?
0:20:02 You go from no running water for almost everybody, no electricity, no cars, no planes, no skyscrapers,
0:20:09 like, to, you know, Manhattan in 1920 looks eminently recognizable in a way that Manhattan
0:20:11 of 1850 would not.
0:20:18 So I don’t think it would have been obvious to anyone in 1850 that Manhattan needed 60
0:20:19 story buildings.
0:20:26 And yet, 70 years later, we had them, like, what’s the, why did we hit the top if we hit
0:20:27 the top?
0:20:28 What happened?
0:20:33 Well, I mean, in the Woolworth building is a good example.
0:20:41 I think it was, it was its size because the client Woolworth wanted that building to be
0:20:42 that big.
0:20:44 It’s this is about me.
0:20:46 This is about a symbol of my commercial success.
0:20:49 This is about my ego.
0:20:57 And it’s really important to remember from an urban development point of view, at this,
0:21:02 when the passenger elevators introduced in the United States, it’s introduced into Europe
0:21:05 at exactly the same moment.
0:21:10 But all major European cities, London’s a good example, Paris certainly had very specific
0:21:11 height restrictions.
0:21:16 You couldn’t build a skyscraper in those cities if you wanted to, because it was constrained
0:21:17 by code.
0:21:21 And also there was no apparent desire to do so.
0:21:26 It was only the United States that we, you know, if someone said, well, I really want
0:21:30 to build this tall building because I want to, you know, it’s the power of my company.
0:21:36 I want to make lots of money and rent space, whatever, that we said, okay.
0:21:40 And not that there weren’t some, I mean, obviously they were gradually development of building
0:21:46 codes, but it was a lot about the ego of the individual client and the fact of the unrestrained
0:21:53 nature of American urban environments that, and that also then, and it’s still true.
0:21:57 It’s still true, but buildings aren’t getting bigger so much, right?
0:22:01 Like yes, you get a building that’s a little taller, but we have not done another 10X,
0:22:08 and yet people still have very large egos and a wish to, you know, show the world their
0:22:11 endowment in the form of the biggest building in the world.
0:22:13 But yet it’s not happening so much anymore.
0:22:15 Is it a technological thing?
0:22:22 It is an interesting point, I mean, you know, we are sort of maxed out right now in terms
0:22:23 of height.
0:22:24 Yeah, why is that?
0:22:30 Is the fact that we’re maxed out on height a product of elevator technology?
0:22:35 Are we waiting for some new elevator technology that will allow us to get buildings that are
0:22:37 profoundly bigger?
0:22:42 Right or wrong, that’s the accepted position of the industry right now, that yes, with
0:22:47 our current technology, we’re as high as we’re going to go.
0:22:53 But I don’t know, but suspect from a real estate perspective is if I had two 100-story
0:22:59 buildings stacked on top of one another, would people be willing to spend the time to get
0:23:01 up to the sky lobby?
0:23:03 200th floor, yeah.
0:23:04 Right.
0:23:06 Am I willing to take that kind of time?
0:23:07 Yeah.
0:23:10 Or the time because they have to take two elevators.
0:23:14 It’s like you got to transfer trains or something.
0:23:21 And if I had a building that size, would it be one where, and we’ve had mixed use skyscrapers
0:23:26 in the past, if I had a building that size, you know, is it one that, you know, I live
0:23:31 on, you know, 150 and I work on 75.
0:23:35 And you shop on three and you go to the gym on six.
0:23:36 And I never leave.
0:23:38 You never leave.
0:23:41 Just hope in, but fun to think about.
0:23:47 So what is the next leap in elevator technology?
0:23:49 What are people trying to solve?
0:23:50 What’s the frontier?
0:23:55 So the next leap is going to be elevators with no cables.
0:24:06 And a TK elevator has developed a system that they call multi, which uses maglev type technology.
0:24:09 Like magnets, like high speed trains.
0:24:11 So it’s floating basically in a shaft.
0:24:12 Yeah.
0:24:15 A similar kind of technology.
0:24:21 And they have developed a prototype where you would have multiple shafts in a building,
0:24:27 multiple cars running up and down in the same shaft, but also horizontal shafts, connecting
0:24:29 vertical shafts.
0:24:36 So I could go up 30 floors, maybe over 200 feet, and then up another 30 floors.
0:24:39 And like the Willy Wonka elevator.
0:24:40 Yes.
0:24:41 Yes.
0:24:42 Yes.
0:24:43 That’s, that’s yes.
0:24:44 The Willy Wonka elevator.
0:24:50 And so that system has been sort of proof of concept in a test tower in Germany.
0:24:58 It has yet to be placed in a building to really demonstrate its viability.
0:25:01 You can see YouTube videos of it in the test tower.
0:25:05 It’s really complicated technologically.
0:25:13 My question is, it’s almost something like, you know, an answer in search of a question.
0:25:19 It’s like, so, you know, I can understand maybe why we need multiple cars in a single
0:25:20 shaft.
0:25:25 I’m not quite sure why we need to move horizontally through a building.
0:25:32 And it is interesting to me that at least as far as I know thus far, there haven’t been
0:25:33 any takers.
0:25:41 No one has said, because it would be an enormous investment in a building to install a system
0:25:48 like that, just to demonstrate that yes, this is the new way.
0:25:51 But that has been a lot of research and a lot of work.
0:26:00 And when it’s perfected and there are no cables, then, you know, in theory, that 200 story
0:26:05 building gets much easier that there’s still the question of why and, you know, why we
0:26:08 would need it.
0:26:11 What about a space elevator?
0:26:18 So the space elevator is an amazing idea and very clever.
0:26:26 And it’s predicated on placing, as you may know, placing some kind of platform in geosynchronous
0:26:30 orbit so it stays above the same point on the Earth.
0:26:35 And then using, I think it’s nanocarbon fibers, if we can ever perfect how to produce that
0:26:42 many, connecting those two points, and then I can run an elevator from the Earth to this
0:26:47 satellite platform, geosynchronous orbit, probably a solar powered elevator.
0:26:53 And suddenly I can start carrying materials up to space very easily and quickly.
0:26:59 And that’s how I’m going to build the next generation of rockets and vehicles that will,
0:27:01 you know, extend our travel.
0:27:06 And presumably if you could get it built, it would be cheaper, although obviously rockets
0:27:08 have gotten much cheaper, cheaper than a rocket.
0:27:10 And it’s like a real idea, right?
0:27:12 I know nobody is actually building it.
0:27:17 But like my understanding of the physics, well, I don’t really understand the physics,
0:27:23 but my understanding of what people who understand the physics say is like, yeah, it’s like a
0:27:24 work.
0:27:25 It’s a real idea.
0:27:30 It’s a very serious idea, lots of people have spent a lot of time thinking about it
0:27:37 and questions about if there’s a delay, it’s the nanocarbon fiber issue is how do we develop
0:27:43 something that can link something in geosynchronous orbit to a place on Earth and then where do
0:27:45 we put it?
0:27:48 Because obviously we don’t want anything flying into the cable.
0:27:50 We haven’t even talked about your escalator work.
0:27:54 What’s happening with escalators?
0:27:59 So one of the projects I’m working on is a book on the history of the escalator.
0:28:07 And it is obviously related to the elevators, but it’s a very different piece of technology
0:28:09 because it’s much more visible.
0:28:14 We sort of, even though people don’t really quite know how it works, it’s magical in
0:28:20 a sense that, and here I think I would encourage everyone to remember about the first time
0:28:25 as a child they saw an escalator because it’s like, “Oh my God, the stairs are moving.”
0:28:30 In a way, sort of visually it’s cooler than an elevator, right?
0:28:32 The elevator does more work.
0:28:35 If I could only have one in the world, I’d choose the elevator.
0:28:40 But especially when the stairs appear and disappear, that’s actually the incredible part.
0:28:41 That’s the genius.
0:28:45 They’re very cool.
0:28:49 Now I will say they are much more dangerous than elevators.
0:28:58 I mean, well, falling on an escalator, they’re really well designed, but because of how we
0:29:02 have to enter and exit, it requires a little bit of coordination.
0:29:07 You can’t fall down an elevator the way you can fall down an escalator.
0:29:10 Is there a good origin story of the escalator?
0:29:11 Is there a moment?
0:29:16 Is there some genius who’s like, “We can squish the steps and then make them big again?”
0:29:29 So in a very odd, so co-insidence, the very first patent for the idea of moving steps
0:29:36 was patented on exactly the same day that Otis Tufts patented his idea or concept of
0:29:40 the passenger elevator, yes.
0:29:46 And this design was never built, but it was somebody saying, “Well, how about this?”
0:29:51 The fact that both of them were patented on the same day, that must tell us something
0:29:53 about that moment.
0:29:57 I insist that it’s not just a coincidence.
0:30:01 What do you think it tells us about what was going on?
0:30:04 Was it 1850s at that moment?
0:30:05 Yeah.
0:30:06 1859.
0:30:07 Yeah.
0:30:16 That’s a really wonderful question, and I would really have to think about it.
0:30:23 It’s this interesting pivot point, we’re right on the verge of a lot of technologies really
0:30:30 taking off, whether it’s Railroad or others.
0:30:35 I’m going to take a stab at it, I have the advantage of ignorance.
0:30:40 It’s a moment when, so the Industrial Revolution has been going on for, call it 100 years at
0:30:42 that point, right?
0:30:48 But it has been industrial, right, in the way you were talking about the elevator.
0:30:55 It has been about factories and warehouses and this very industrial setting.
0:31:01 And these are both inventions that are taking the insights, the innovations of the Industrial
0:31:07 Revolution and bringing them to the lives of ordinary people.
0:31:09 And maybe this is a moment when that is starting to happen.
0:31:13 You’re getting these grand hotels you were describing that are bringing technology.
0:31:19 You’re getting the kind of ladies paradise early department stores and industrialization
0:31:21 is becoming sort of domesticated.
0:31:28 And both the passenger elevator and the escalator maybe are manifestations of that.
0:31:32 I think that’s a very plausible, very reasonable explanation.
0:31:34 Okay, I’ll take plausible.
0:31:38 I will take plausible.
0:31:52 We’ll be back in a minute with the lightning round.
0:31:56 Okay, let’s finish, let’s finish with the lightning round.
0:32:01 Favorite elevator reference in a song?
0:32:04 Probably Aerosmith, Love and Elevator.
0:32:11 Great, favorite elevator in a movie.
0:32:15 Actually, everybody forgets about it, but it’s in the movie Speed.
0:32:19 Speed’s about a bus, am I thinking about the right movie?
0:32:25 Yes, but it’s in the first third of the movie when the elevator gets blown up.
0:32:27 Why that one?
0:32:31 Because ironically, it’s one of the few times Hollywood gets it right.
0:32:38 The cables are blown off the car and you see the safeties grab and stop the car.
0:32:41 And it’s just like, yeah, that’s what would happen.
0:32:43 Now, I guess I should call it.
0:32:51 The other one is the Willy Wonka elevator, the Johnny Depp one, not the Gene Wilder one.
0:32:59 I know an elevator is not going to go into free fall, but what is a dangerous thing that
0:33:06 I should not do on or near an elevator?
0:33:08 That’s a really good question.
0:33:13 There are many, many safety devices in place on elevators.
0:33:17 With all of those in place, what I still would probably not suggest is if the door is starting
0:33:25 to close, don’t put your arm in that gap, thinking the door will automatically rebound.
0:33:30 It should, but I wouldn’t do that or put your foot in the gap.
0:33:33 How many articles have you written for Elevator World Magazine?
0:33:36 Over 250.
0:33:39 Have you ever been stuck in an elevator?
0:33:40 Almost, but no.
0:33:44 I had an elevator once that stopped and I thought, okay, this is my first experience
0:33:46 and then it started moving again.
0:33:48 So no, I haven’t had that experience yet.
0:33:51 Were you kind of disappointed when it started moving again?
0:33:52 A little bit, yeah.
0:33:57 I mean, I feel like if you’re you, you kind of in a controlled way want to be stuck on
0:34:00 an elevator once for not too long.
0:34:07 The advantage, and I only know this because of what I know, is if an elevator stops moving,
0:34:12 I’m in the safest place I can be in the elevator car and then I just wait for help.
0:34:18 Have you ever, ever walked up a down escalator?
0:34:21 No.
0:34:26 Have you ever walked down an up escalator?
0:34:28 No.
0:34:32 Do you push the door close button on the elevator?
0:34:33 Sometimes.
0:34:34 Does it work?
0:34:35 I have read that it doesn’t work.
0:34:37 Is that true?
0:34:38 It works.
0:34:45 Tell me one thing I don’t know about moving sidewalks.
0:34:56 The first, okay, the first moving sidewalks were intended as urban transportation systems.
0:35:02 Like to get me from 1st Avenue to Central Park, like what does that mean?
0:35:08 So the idea would be if you went, so imagine going down into a modern subway system, but
0:35:14 instead of waiting for a subway car, moving in front of you or continuously moving in
0:35:16 front of you is a moving sidewalk.
0:35:17 Oh, I love it.
0:35:18 I love it.
0:35:19 Is it going so fast?
0:35:20 No.
0:35:27 And so the original idea was that, let’s say you would have four moving sidewalks.
0:35:33 And so the first one is moving at 1.5 feet per minute, the second one at three, the next
0:35:34 one at four.
0:35:38 So I can get on the first one from a standstill and then I can sort of accelerate by getting
0:35:43 on to subsequent moving sidewalks, and then I want a moving sidewalk that’s just like jamming
0:35:44 along.
0:35:45 Yes.
0:35:46 That sounds so fun.
0:35:51 I mean, it doesn’t seem like a good idea, but it seems fun.
0:35:59 One example that was built that you can actually see in operation, the 1900 Paris Exposition,
0:36:05 there was a moving sidewalk system like that that went around a large part of the exposition
0:36:08 grounds and it was filmed.
0:36:14 And if you Google Moving Sidewalk Paris, you can watch movies of people getting on and
0:36:19 off and it’s hysterical.
0:36:25 Lee Gray is a professor of architectural history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
0:36:28 Today’s show was produced by Gabriel Hunter Chang.
0:36:33 It was edited by Lydia Jean Cotte and engineered by Sarah Bouguere.
0:36:36 You can email us at problem@pushkin.fm.
0:36:37 I’m Jacob Goldstein.
0:36:40 We’ll be back next week with another episode of What’s Your Problem?
0:36:46 [MUSIC PLAYING]
0:36:49 (upbeat music)
0:36:59 [BLANK_AUDIO]
The elevator made the modern city possible: No elevators, no skyscrapers. Today, people are working on entirely new kinds of elevators that can go higher and faster than ever. On today’s show, we talk about those innovations with Lee Gray, who is possibly the world’s leading elevator historian and definitely a professor of architectural history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
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