The OTIS lift

I spent my whole childhood in the suburbs of Chennai, and the only impression of cities I had then was this; urban jungle with tall buildings shooting to the sky.

As a kid, I wondered how people managed to climb those floors in the first place. I find myself exhausted climbing two floors in my apartment and people doing that consistently in the city is what boggled me; they must be the Tarzan clan, that's what I thought back then. Well, what else could you expect a kid to think who was entrenched in watching pogo channels 24x7.

Of course, it never occurred to me that there would be a thing that is powered by a couple of motors and uses pulleys to lift people. Speaking of pulleys, I had a hard time solving HC Verma's pulley problems in my plus 2 grade, so no wonder my mind hasn't figured it out.

My dad's boss has invited us to his daughter's wedding in Chennai. It was this big fat wedding; an extravaganza ambience, a platter of delicious foods and every other thing that you find on a high budget Bollywood movie.

Yeah, I know weddings are boring, but not if you are a kid of age 12 who is after that one extra scoop of ice cream, my gang and I went in rounds to devour different flavors. We came across this mysterious thing that looked like a car except it didn't have any seats, and it was making rounds in a vertical position. What is this thing I wondered? The LIFT.

Like every other kid would throw their never-ending questions at elders, I picked up curiosity on the nearby security guard. He really had a hard time explaining to me the concept of tension and how a powered motor would pull a bunch of people.

He finally sighed and agreed to take me for a ride in the lift along with my gang, and as we hoped, it took us to the top floor in no time, and that felt like someone was lifting us to air. And inside this lift, it read with embossed letters “OTIS”.

Eighteen years later, I would discover the story behind those four letters “OTIS”. Okay, this blog isn't about my childhood experience about me taking the lift but about this incredible man who put his life at stake to prove his innovation to the world, Elisha Graves Otis.

Okay, it's not like Otis invented the lift system. They were already in place, but what he did to that already existing system had made it more popular and made the masses embrace the tech. In this context, if you trace back to history, it always worked this way, Thomas Elva Edison never really invented the bulb and Newton coming up with that equation wasn’t by himself after all, as Newton’s put it

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”

This statement is now often used to symbolise scientific progress, so the point is that every invention we see today in our physical world is a chain of innovations.

Until 1857 people used the elevator to haul the freight and never preferred to take it on their own. Simple, it has no fail-proof system; you are dead once the tension rope broke.

Coming back to Mr Otis, in 1852, he designed and installed what he called the “safety hoist,” the first elevator equipped with an automatic safety device to prevent it from falling if the lifting chain or rope broke. His invention was making sales but hasn’t reached its place where it should really be.

What made the heads turn around to his invention was his brief act of showmanship. In 1854, at the New York Crystal Palace, while standing on top of a hoist suspended high in the air, Otis ordered the rope holding the platform to be cut with an axe. The heavy platform fell only a few inches before it was stopped by the safety device, electrifying the cheering crowd.




This brought attention to the whole world, and orders came flooding in, doubling every year. On March 23, 1857, he installed the first safety elevator for passenger service in the store of E.V. Haughwout & Co. in New York City.

We all knew about the Eiffel tower which demonstrated both engineering genius and a firm grasp of the emerging aesthetic of the industrial age and it is the OTIS’s company that went on to install the elevator in Eiffel Tower in 1889.

So next time when you walk into an elevator, just look at the inside mirror and give a smile. I'm sure it will reach the man , ‘Elisha Graves Otis’.

To learn more about how the Elisha Safety tower worked (click here)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Pellichupulu Date

Image
When you grow together in love, sometimes you pause to watch the person next to you and feel thankful for life. You may wonder where it all started. For me, that moment is our first date, “the pellichupulu date” – the starting point of the trajectory of our love. Ayyira and I met at a traditional pellichupulu, spoke there, and connected on Instagram. We hadn't informed our parents of our decision yet, as we thought we should take some time. We texted for a week, and one weekend, I decided to go meet her in Hyderabad. I still recall that day when I stood in the Tatkal line to book a ticket; my hands were trembling not just from the Tatkal pressure, but also from thoughts of how the day would go when I met her in Hyderabad. I texted her the Saturday evening when I was boarding the train, and she had plans for Sunday to visit her parents. However, she cancelled her plans and decided to meet me. She asked about my plan for the day, and honestly, I had none. My whole intention was to me
Read more

Love in inverted schedule

Image
Ram and Ayyira have been married for nearly a year, and in just 10 days, they'll celebrate their first anniversary. They both work in the software industry, but their work schedules are quite different. Ram's work hours follow the usual 9-5 routine, while Ayyira's shift begins at 9, but during a different part of the day. In the beginning, they faced challenges in finding a common time to spend quality moments together. However, it didn't take them long to discover the beauty of love within their inverted schedules. They did have their fair share of arguments and disagreements, watching the newly released movie on matinee or evening show, and going out for lunch or dinner, but the remarkable aspect of their relationship was that they always resolved these issues before bedtime. Netflix and chill, Swiggy and bill. Occasionally, Ayyira had the opportunity to work from home. Before she logged in, Ram would sit beside her, sharing the events of his day. In return, she would
Read more

Packing Happiness

Image
Last night, I found myself in a bit of a rush to send off the skating shoes I'd bought for my nephew. Staff at the RTC parcel service refused to take them unless they were properly boxed up. It was already 8:45 in the evening, and with closing time at 9, I was running out of options. There were no department stores nearby, so in a bit of desperation, I hurried into a nearby PAN shop. The shopkeeper, a man in his sixties, took one look at the shoes and exclaimed with excitement, "Aren't these skating shoes?" It wasn't surprising to me that he recognized them; it was popularised in mainstream movies. But what caught my attention was the genuine joy he expressed as he carefully packed the shoes. Despite his shop being crowded with customers, he didn't hesitate to roll up his sleeves and handle the task with utmost professionalism. During our conversation, he shared with me his longing for skating. He told me how he had always dreamt of owning a pair himself but n
Read more