5

5th Floor

Social Impact

The impact of the elevator on society is easy to see. A glace at any city, whether big or small, will show just how widespread the use of the elevator is. Before the invention of the elevator safety brake in the early nineteenth century, “the normal height of buildings…in the largest cities [was] five stories, except for ornamental purposes” (Williams/Williams 163). The majority of the population lived in the country. Because of this, cities we’re small compared to today and had a reasonable amount of room in which to expand. However, in “the last half of the nineteenth century…people [crowded] into the larger cities…As a result it became necessary either to dig cellars deeper, raise roofs higher, or do both” (Williams/Williams 163). This led to the obvious conclusion that buildings could simply be built taller than five stories. The only limitation to how high a building could be was people’s physical ability to climb the stairs. Unfortunately, “four flights of stairs to reach a fifth story, [represented] about the limit to which man would ascend…unless absolutely necessary” (Williams/Williams 164).  The only way around this problem was to find an alternative to human power. People simply cannot climb up and down ten flights of stairs in every building. The solution was already available in the form of the elevator, which was “at least as old as Archimedes (236 B.C.) ” in various primitive designs (Kennedy 888). Only one problem remained: safety. The elevator safety brake solved this problem and removed any restrictions on building height apart from building strength. Without this invention, the elevator may never have become a widely accepted means of transportation. There is no question that the Otis elevator safety brake has had a major impact on modern society.

The dramatic rise in urban population of the late nineteenth century would never have been possible without the safety brake. Cities would have been forced to grow horizontally as had been the case for hundreds of years. Imagine the entire area inside of all the buildings in New York City. Now imagine if no building was over five stories. The amount of land necessary for one city alone is staggering. The skyscraper and the modern cityscape are a common part of life now, but they may not have been. This invention, while providing an easy and convenient means of vertical transportation, allowed for the unrestricted growth of the modern city that is still active today.