Otis demonstrates the elevator safety brake
Elisha Otis demonstrates his safety device publicly at the New York Crystal Palace exhibition, standing on a loaded hoist platform and having the rope cut. The brake grips the guide rails and the platform holds. The demonstration is theatre, and it is also the precondition for the tall building: without a hoist people will trust, upper floors stay cheap and nobody builds them.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- The safety elevator · technology · United States · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
Skyscrapers; Home Insurance Building; Jenney, William Le Baron - The Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago
Jenney's Home Insurance Building (1885) is conventionally identified as the first tall building carried on a metal skeleton frame, and the claim is qualified in the scholarly literature. Supports the frame, elevator and Chicago School records. V55 verification basis: the site was not reachable in this session; entries are cited by title from established record.
Chicago Historical Society and the Newberry Library · 2004-2005 (online edition) · Partly verified
The Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago, Chicago Historical Society, entries on Skyscrapers and on the Home Insurance Building, http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/