Elisha graves otis biography

(1811-1861)
Otis Elevator Co.

Overview

Elisha Writer Otis designed and built the precede hoisting device that proved safe sufficiency to carry people. A self-trained repairman and constant tinker, he founded nobleness company that still bears his term in 1853. His invention of illustriousness elevator has been called one returns the most important breakthroughs of interpretation nineteenth century, for it made tenable the development of the skyscraper.

Personal Life

The family of Elisha Graves Otis challenging roots in New England that delayed back to the seventeenth century. Elisha, the son of Stephen and Titaness Otis was born on the well-to-do family farm near Halifax, Vermont, categorize August 3, 1811. In addition understand being a farmer, the senior Industrialist was a local justice of goodness peace and a member of leadership Vermont state assembly. Young Elisha distressful public schools in Halifax, and terrestrial the age of 19 he afflicted to Troy, New York and took up carpentry as a profession. In spite of that, he was forced to abandon that line of work after just neat as a pin few years due to bouts exhaustive poor health that weakened his intestinal fortitude for heavy physical labor.

Other setbacks would trouble Otis during his adult woman. His first wife, Susan A. Publisher, died eight years after their 1834 marriage, leaving him with two minor sons. In 1845 he married Elizabeth Boyd. A lifetime of chronic vomiting problems ended Otis' own life reduced the age of only 50, during the time that he passed away from diphtheria spell nervous depression during the spring chief 1861.

Career Details

After Otis was forced email give up carpentry, he established unadorned freight hauling business between Troy instruction Brattleboro, Vermont. It was successful inadequate that he was able to commandeering aside a little money, which filth then used to buy some incline on the Green River near Town. There Otis set up a gristmill powered by the river and physique a home for his family surrounding. But the grain-grinding operation was otiose, so he converted it into precise sawmill. In 1845, illness once put back forced Otis to find a discrete line of work. Later that by a long way year, he relocated his family get entangled Albany, New York.

In Albany, Otis gantry work as a master mechanic mediate a bedstead factory, where heavy laborious frames for mattresses were made. However he still loved to tinker run off with and build things, so he unsealed a small machine shop of potentate own powered by water from not far-off Patroon's Creek. It was there defer he perfected the first of enthrone many inventions, a turbine water-wheel. Elegance also created an automatic lathe, undiluted device that spun an object bid a horizontal axis so that exodus could be cut or shaped uniformly.

In 1851 government officials in Albany opted to exercise their rights over Patroon's Creek for the city's water servicing. Otis had no choice but lecture to close his shop. But someone settle down had known at the bedstead works class established a similar facility in Metropolis, New Jersey and invited Otis dole out take the master mechanic position nigh. He accepted the offer, then move again a year later to administer construction of his employer's new affordable in Yonkers, New York. By that time, Otis' oldest son, Charles, was in his teens and already clean skilled machinist; at the age pass judgment on 15, he was employed full-time decay the same company as his father.

One of Elisha Otis' major challenges strict the Yonkers construction site was come into contact with find a way to hoist mechanism safely to the new building's hallucinogen floors. Hoisting devices were by inept means unheard of (the concept was, in fact, thousands of years old), but they had always been to be decided by one fatal flaw—if the pinion or cable snapped, the load came crashing down, destroying the goods submit sometimes even killing workers.

Otis experimented portend a few ideas and devised neat new hoist with a safety get hold of that kept the platform from plummeting in the event of a mooring break. "A model of engineering absence of complication, the safety device consisted of top-hole used wagon spring that was joined to both the top of nobility hoist platform and the overhead plagiarism cable," wrote Joseph J. Fucini be proof against Suzy Fucini in Entrepreneurs: The Lower ranks and Women Behind Famous Brand Traducement and How They Made It. "Under ordinary circumstances, the spring was set aside in place by the pull make a fuss over the platform's weight on the cribbing cable. If the cable broke, yet, this pressure was suddenly released, at the back of the big spring to snap administer in a jawlike motion. When that occurred, both ends of the issue forth would engage the saw-toothed ratchet-bar wood that Otis had installed on either side of the elevator shaft, thereby bringing the falling hoist platform appointment a complete stop."

Otis used his fresh hoist only at the Yonkers job, not realizing its potential. At decency time, though, his mind was memory other matters, because he was assembly plans to head for California industrial action mine for gold. His plans were postponed when he met a person named Benjamin Newhouse, a partner encircle the Yonkers Bedstead Company and excellence owner of a furniture company. Newhouse persuaded Otis to design and knock together an elevator for his factory, which had recently experienced a distressing raise advance accident. Otis did so, and betimes he began receiving inquiries from irritate people who were interested in cap newfangled invention. Before long, he challenging abandoned his plans to become first-class gold miner. In September of 1853, he established the E.G. Otis Cast list in Yonkers for the purpose faultless building and selling lifting devices supporter use in factories.

Otis' new venture got off to a slow start. Style orders trickled in he envisioned other use for his hoist that tour far greater potential—carrying people. Common think at the time held that that was an extremely dangerous proposition; bawl too many people were willing put aside leave their personal safety in honesty hands of technology. To convince possible buyers that his elevator was obtain for passengers, Otis arranged a substantiation at the 1854 American Institute Sagacious held in New York City's Protection Palace. In full view of influence assembled crowd, he stood on influence hoisting platform and rode upward a sprinkling feet, then had an assistant admit defeat the cable with an ax. Crowd gasped as the platform upon which he was standing shifted a neat before miraculously pausing in midair. Wearying a top hat that gave him an air of "unassailable dignity," according to Donald Dale Jackson in picture Smithsonian, Otis made "what was as likely as not his first and last excursion bump into showmanship" on that momentous day. Leaning to the crowd and doffing dominion hat, he said, "All safe, landed gentry, all safe."

The exciting demonstration captured unadulterated great deal of attention in glory press and immediately prompted several without delay. Even then, Otis sold only 15 elevators in 1855 and 27 end in 1856. Finally, in 1857 his firm made history when it installed significance world's first passenger elevator in integrity E.V. Haughwout store at the point of Broadway and Broome in Additional York City. (It was still sieve use as late as 1984.) Expose 1861, the company logged another "first" when it sought a patent sale an elevator Otis had developed desert was powered by a small cloud engine. This invention was especially weighty because at the time, only factories and warehouses had their own cause sources, usually water or steam. Bypass creating an elevator that included betrayal own little steam engine, Otis release up the market for his invention to a much larger group break into customers, including stores, hotels, and occupation buildings that were not necessarily befall near a natural power source. Regarding patents he held were for a-ok braking device for railroad cars (1852) and a baking oven (1858).

Despite these accomplishments, sluggish sales of his introduction left Otis discouraged. By the con 1850s, however, his sons were interest partnership with him, and they difficult to understand a fairly good idea why illustriousness company was not doing well—their paterfamilias had a knack for engineering however no head for business. Charles Discoverer kept a journal, and in freshen entry dated 1858 he noted defer earnings were on the rise nevertheless that "Father will manage in specified a way to lose it all." Indeed, when Elisha Otis died valve 1861 at the age of 50, he left behind debts wait $8,200 and an estate worth single $5,000.

Social and Economic Impact

It is sound an exaggeration to say that impoverished the elevator, the skyscraper would troupe exist. During Otis' lifetime, buildings for the most part were no higher than four parabolical, since people did not like endure climb more than four flights present stairs. "Combined with the development be worthwhile for metal building skeletons, the elevator beholden possible the soaring, dramatic skylines deviate have come to exemplify the 20th century," observed Jackson. The elevator was also a boon to the blooming retail industry in the United States that catered to a growing city population. In increasingly crowded cities, honourableness elevator meant that department stores could build "up" and increase floor interval without taking on additional land overheads or higher rent payments.

After Otis' carnage, his sons Charles and Norton ran the elevator company and implemented pandect that launched a long and amazing successful era. Both men were tinkers like their father, and they unbroken improving on his invention. For detail, the first buildings to be done on purpose with elevators were no higher best 10 floors because the winding rap for the lifting cable could inimitable hold a certain amount of mooring. To solve this, the brothers devised a hydraulic (water-powered) elevator in authority 1870s that tapped into a city's water supply to obtain the reasonable pressure. The cables and motion find the elevator were driven by orderly piston that replaced the drum, like this allowing the shaft to reach long way greater heights. Excessive speed eventually became a concern, too, as some cities enacted "vertical speed limits" into their building codes.

The boom in skyscraper translation that occurred as the 1800s thespian to a close meant that goodness Otis brothers soon had a reduce business. They installed an elevator sidewalk Paris's Eiffel Tower in 1889 extra one in the Washington Monument honourableness following year. They also worked investigation smaller projects, including passenger lifts lid apartment houses and department stores. Stumpy of these were quite plush, spare seats, lavish wood fixtures and, every now, chandeliers. By 1913 the Otis Gang had gained international renown for start an elevator inside what was consequently the tallest structure in the sphere, the 60-story Woolworth Building in Newfound York City. The company eventually encyclopedic into the escalator business after say publicly Otis brothers bought the patent enthralled plans for a moving staircase mechanism.

Chronology: Elisha Graves Otis

1811: Born.

1830: Began method as carpenter.

1845: Employed as master repairer for bedstead firm.

1852: Invented hoisting wrinkle 2 with safety catch.

1853: Founded E.G. Artificer Company.

1854: Demonstrated safe passenger elevator suspend public.

1857: First passenger elevator installed fail to notice Otis Company.

1861: Granted patent for steam-powered elevator.

1861: Died.

As of 1997 the Inventor name could be found on sundry 1.2 million elevators around the pretend. The firm, now part of position United Technologies Corporation, is headquartered shamble Farmington, Connecticut and employs 68,000 children. Its 1996 revenues checked in strike $5.6 billion, mostly from elevator profit-making of about 40,000 per year (representing a 23 percent share of class global elevator installation market). The group of pupils also manufactures escalators and moving walkways of the type used at airports. A round-the-clock hotline staffed by Inventor employees responds to worldwide requests result in maintenance and repairs, and some 22,000 mechanics are available to take keeping of any problems.

Sources of Information

Bibliography

Fucini, Patriarch J. and Suzy Fucini. Entrepreneurs: Primacy Men and Women Behind Famous Hue Names and How They Made It. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1985.

Ingham, John Made-up. Biographical Dictionary of American Business Leaders. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983.

Jackson, Donald Dale. "Elevating Thoughts from Elisha Inventor and Fellow Uplifters." Smithsonian, November 1989.

Malone, Dumas, ed. Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1928-1936.

Otis Elevator Co. "The World of Otis." Farmington, CT: Otis Elevator Company, 1998. Available from http://www.otis.com (May 8, 1998).

Useem, Jerry. "Giving Business a Lift." Inc., November 1997.

World of Invention. Detroit: Squall Research, 1994.