The Secret Lives of Elevators
April 15th, 2008
The New Yorker currently features a fascinating article on the humble elevator. Often overlooked, these machines influence our lives in a surprising number of ways - from limiting the maximum height of a skyscraper (architect Adrian Smith estimates that a mile-high tower would need over two hundred quadruple-decker elevators) to making or breaking a building (The Bronx family court was effectively shut down by an ineffective lift system).
The story centres around Nicholas White, a man who spent 41 hours trapped in malfunctioned lift. From there, we see the science of transporting people vertically - from managing people’s innate fear of small spaces (since the early 90s, the “close door” button only exists to give an illusion of control: it doesn’t actually work) to figuring out the best strategy for moving hundreds of millions of passengers every day. Fascinating, geeky stuff (link).
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3 Comments Add your own
1. Andy Lewis | April 16th, 2008 at 12:06 am
Shit. This is bad news. All this time my inner Type A personality has been desperatly pressing the ‘close door’ button so that I will not be left hanging around. I am a delusions fool, swearing at traffic lights.
2. Frank the SciencePunk | April 16th, 2008 at 9:23 am
Speaking of traffic lights, I’m forever arguing with people who believe flashing their headlights changes a red to a green faster. How do these people think traffic lights work during the day?
3. Patrick | April 16th, 2008 at 9:55 am
I’m not entirely sure about elsewhere, but at the dorm I live in, our two three story elevators (north and south end of the building) do have an active close button. We’ve had numerous events where the elevator would become stuck on a floor with the door open (generally damage from people pounding on the doors out of stupidity), and pressing the close button will force the door to close, even though the malfunction that stops the elevator from moving 90% of the time in that state will cause the door to open again.
In addition, there’s a delay after the door opens in normal circumstances, while the close button won’t work if the door motors are moving at all, it will react instantaneously if it is entirely open. I have seen elevators with inactive close-controls though, and it is quite amusing to watch people mash the button.
Maybe it has to do with the company that services the individual elevators, or potentially an option on installation? Like the qualifier in the article noted: most. Certainly an interesting watch and read though.
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