So many important inventions depend on some other innovation. For example, one of the most important advances in architecture was the development of the skyscraper in the late nineteenth century.
But it could never have happened without the coincidental invention of the elevator, the “ascending room”. After all, people then, as now, were reluctant to climb more than a few flights of stairs.
What’s more, it was not just the elevator that was necessary. It had to be safe. And it was the American craftsman-engineer, Elisha Graves Otis, who in 1852 invented the first safety-brake for elevators. Together with changes in construction, it was this that enabled buildings to climb high up into the sky.
His breakthrough commercially came when he dramatically demonstrated his new product at the New York World Fair two years later, attracting widespread publicity.
There are now estimated to be 1.7 million Otis elevators in operation around the world. Plus all their competitors.
Do you ride in an Otis regularly?
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