Cold Open

It’s May 1854, at the World’s Fair in New York City.

Standing on an elevator platform hoisted 30 feet into the air, Elisha Otis waves his top hat above his head and calls out for the crowd’s attention.

But hardly anyone looks around. Elevators are far from the most exciting thing in the hall. The Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations is America’s chance to demonstrate its ingenuity. Inventors and industrialists from across the country have gathered here to show off their latest contraptions, and an elevator is nothing to write home about—hoists and pulleys are ancient technology.

But there is something special about Elisha’s elevator—and he’s about to reveal it to the crowd. He grabs hold of the side of the platform to steady himself and shouts out a signal.

Above the hoist, someone steps out onto a scaffold brandishing an ax.

A spectator cries out a warning, but Elisha looks on calmly as the man with the ax swings and slices through the elevator’s cable with a single blow.

People in the crowd scream, expecting Elisha to fall to his death, victim to an ax-wielding madman.

But after a half second of freefall, Elisha’s platform jolts to a stop—just as he knew it would.

With a flourish, Elisha gestures to the hoist above his head. And over the applause, he explains that his life has just been saved by a safety brake of his own design. Hoists may be ancient technology, but this is something new.

Over the next few weeks, Elisha Otis returns to the World’s Fair several more times to repeat his attention-grabbing trick. His safety mechanism is simple and automatic, and the Otis Elevator Company soon gets more business on the back of this demonstration. But it’s only factories and warehouses that show any interest—until Elisha installs the world’s first passenger elevator in a department store on March 23rd, 1857.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham, and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is March 23rd, 1857: The First Passenger Elevator.

Act One: The Idea

It’s 1852, in Bergen, New Jersey, two years before the New York World’s Fair.

Elisha Otis pulls on a hoist, lowering a crate into a waiting cart. His friend and employer, Josiah Maize, is relocating his bedframe factory to Yonkers in New York, and Elisha is in charge of the move. This involves transporting expensive and very heavy machinery from one site to the other. And often, doing it by hand.

The heavy crate settles onto the cart with a thud. Elisha steps away to wipe his face as another worker takes over for a while.

Elisha is in his forties. Raised on a Vermont farm, he is tall and strong, and he's never shirked hard work, but he never took to farming himself. Instead, as a boy, he’d visit the village blacksmith whenever he could and tinker with the farm machinery his neighbors had brought in for repair. Eventually, though, even this wasn’t enough for him. In 1830, when Elisha was 19 years old, he left home to seek his fortune.

Since then, he’s moved from city to city, sometimes working for others, sometimes being his own boss. Over the years, he’s learned how cruel business can be, though. His last company was a machine shop in upstate New York. Its equipment was powered by the flow of a creek, but the nearby city of Albany was growing fast, and it drank the water dry. As a godly man, Elisha considered it a sign from the heavens that his path lay elsewhere. He considered trying his luck out west with the California gold rush. But then Josiah offered him a job as his chief mechanic, and seven years later, here he is.

Elisha is glad to have work at the factory—it gives him the opportunity to tinker with machines to his heart’s content. He’s already designed a new type of lathe that can craft bedstead rails four times faster than a man. Today, though, his job is simpler and is more physical.

Elisha wanders over to the barrel of water in the corner of the yard and takes a long drink. But just then, he hears a sudden crash and a yell of pain. He turns to see a smashed crate on the cobbles, broken machinery all around, and a workman clutching at his pinned foot. Elisha runs over and pulls him free. And as the worker cradles his broken toes, Elisha looks up at the hoist. It's just as he thought. The frayed end of the rope dangles uselessly from the winch. It’s snapped under the load. The workman is lucky to be alive.

Such accidents are common in docks and warehouses across the country. And that gives Elisha an idea. When the bedstead company sets up its new home in Yonkers, the three-story factory needs some alterations. To help reduce the burden on workers, Elisha builds a steam-powered elevator to move heavy lumber from floor to floor. And at first glance, there isn’t anything unique about this powered hoist—it looks much like those found in factories all over the world.

But Elisha has never seen a machine he couldn’t improve. So first, he puts in guide rails to keep the platform in place as it moves. Then he takes a cart spring, places it on the roof of the car, and connects it to the hoisting rope. When the rope is taut, it compresses the spring. But if the rope suddenly goes slack—because it’s snapped—then the spring will immediately decompress, pushing locks into the guide rail and stopping the elevator from falling in less than a second.

There are other hoists with brakes already. But these rely on the operator’s reflexes to pull a lever. Elisha’s “safety hoist,” on the other hand, should always activate automatically.

And a few weeks after he installs this new hoist, one of his boss’s business partners pays a visit to the factory. Two of his workers at another site were killed recently by a falling hoist, so when he heard about Elisha’s new design, he was immediately interested. Elisha takes him over to the freight elevator and explains how the mechanism works. The businessman is impressed and offers Elisha $600 for two of his “safety hoists.”

A handshake quickly seals the deal, and when the rest of the factory workers go home that evening, Elisha gets to work. He’s spent much of his life wandering, searching for purpose. And now, he thinks he’s found it. He will start a new company to sell his innovative safety hoist. But his rise to the top won’t be easy.

Act Two: The Rise

It’s April 1854, in Yonkers, just outside New York City, six months after Elisha Otis sold his first safety hoists.

Elisha sits at his desk in the workshop, checking his books.

The factory around him is deserted. There are no workers, the lathes are still, and the enormous steam engine that once powered the equipment here is silent. The bedstead business has gone bust, and the factory has closed down. But while the other workers have moved on, Elisha has stayed behind and rented the space for his own business—the Otis Elevator Company.

But since selling his first two hoists, he’s only sold one more—and that buyer didn’t even pay with money. Instead, he gave Elisha an old cannon, which now sits gathering dust in the corner of the workshop. Elisha knows he should have turned it down, but he figured any sale was better than nothing. He’s certain he has a great product, one that every warehouse and factory owner in the country should be interested in. But Elisha is struggling to get the word out.

He closes his account book and rubs his eyes. He wonders how his sons, Charles and Norton, are getting along. They went into New York City earlier to try and chase down a potential client. He only hopes they return with some good news.

So hoping to distract himself, Elisha picks up a copy of the day’s New York Times, which sits on the corner of the desk. As he flips through its pages, an article catches his eye. The World’s Fair has temporarily closed its doors for renovation. The Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations is under the new management of famous showman P. T. Barnum, who has been brought in to encourage ticket sales.

Elisha can understand why. He went to the exhibition last year to see the greatest examples of American ingenuity. But he wasn’t impressed.

Now, though, that disappointment presents him with an opening. P. T. Barnum is appealing for new displays before the grand reopening next month. This is the perfect opportunity for Elisha to demonstrate what his elevator can do.

So in an instant, his weariness is gone. Casting about for pen and paper, he excitedly writes a letter to Barnum. Elisha describes his safety hoist, explaining how it works and what makes it special. He then asks Barnum to give him a space in the revamped exhibition. And as he writes, the seed of another idea forms in his mind. Barnum will want a show. And Elisha thinks he knows just how to give him one.

P. T. Barnum quickly replies and takes him up on the offer. He encloses a check for $100 with a letter telling Elisha to come to New York as soon as possible. It’s Elisha’s first sale since he received the cannon, and his wife is much happier with this form of payment. Still, she’s less thrilled when Elisha tells her his idea for the exhibition—and by the time the World’s Fair is ready to reopen, he shares some of her anxieties.

There, in the exhibition hall with his sons watching from the ground, Elisha performs one final test before the paying public enters. He slowly rises on a wooden platform, hoisted into the air by his mechanism. It stops at 30 feet. If he fell from this height, he’d be badly injured or possibly even killed. But he has faith in his invention. So with a shout, he gives the signal. And after a few seconds, his sons below unfasten a rope, and the platform jolts downward. Elisha’s stomach lurches for a moment, and despite his confidence in his design, he can’t help feeling a flash of fear. But the safety brake kicks in. And the sound of the mechanism engaging and stopping the elevator echoes throughout the vast hall.

Elisha sees everyone stop their own work to look. He gives them a cheery wave and yells, “All safe, gentlemen!” Everything has worked perfectly. Elisha and his invention are ready for their audience.

And Elisha’s daring demonstration of his new safety elevator will be the talk of the World’s Fair. Soon, orders will flood in, and the Otis Elevator Company will grow far beyond Elisha’s dusty workshop in Yonkers. His invention has also come at the perfect time. As cities across America build up as well as out, the demand for safe and reliable elevators will grow—and it won’t just be goods and supplies that will be on the move. Soon, it will be time for passengers to take a ride as well.

Act Three: The Titan of Industry

It’s March 23rd, 1857, in New York City, three years after the World’s Fair.

Elisha Otis gives his latest elevator a final inspection, alongside his client, E.V. Haughwout. At five stories high, this elevator is far from the tallest Elisha has installed, but it’s the first of its kind in another way.

Haughwout is about to open a new department store. It has all the modern conveniences people have come to expect, but with Elisha’s elevator, he hopes his store will stand out from the crowd. Customers will be able to use it to travel from floor to floor without the inconvenience of climbing stairs. It’s the first time that an elevator has been designed for mass passenger use—freight elevators have always been considered too dangerous for people to use. But Elisha Otis’ safety hoist has changed all of that.

Satisfied that the installation is complete, Elisha fires up the small steam engine that powers the elevator and opens its doors. He welcomes Haughwout into the carriage as its first passenger, and together they ride the elevator all the way to the fifth floor.

It's just the first of many such elevators to be installed in New York. But Elisha Otis won’t live to see the true success of his invention. In 1861, he’ll die suddenly at the age of just 49. His company will pass to his two sons, Charles and Norton, and they’ll be the ones who refine his design and take the company international.

And decades later, in 1889, they will echo their father’s famous demonstration in New York when they install an Otis Elevator in the centerpiece of another World Fair—the Eiffel Tower in Paris. By then, Otis elevators will no longer be limited to warehouses and factories, but will be a familiar sight in high-rise buildings all over the world. And in the decades to come, skyscrapers will continue to reach higher and higher, transforming city life in a way that would have been all but impossible without Elisha Otis’ invention, which was installed in a passenger elevator for the first time on March 23rd, 1857.

Outro

Next on History Daily. March 24th, 1953. Bodies are discovered in West London, leading to the arrest of a serial killer and the terrible revelation that an innocent man was executed for some other crimes.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Mollie Baack.

Music by Thrumm.

This episode is written and researched by Samuel Hume.

Edited by William Simpson.

Managing producer Emily Burke.

Executive Producers are William Simpson for Airship and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.