Original version

BBC World Service Online

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy

Factual: Money

The stories of inventions, ideas and innovations which helped create the economic world

Tim Harford tells the fascinating stories of inventions, ideas and innovations which have helped create the economic world.

BBC World Service schedule for American satellite radio and the Caribbean

BBC World Service Americas and the Caribbean

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa Schedule

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa

BBC World Service East Asia

BBC World Service Europe and the Middle East

BBC World Service South Asia

BBC World Service West and Central Africa Schedule

BBC World Service West and Central Africa

BBC World Service Australasia

BBC World Service

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy: Elevator

Discussion & Talk

News

Elevator

15/04/2017 GMT

BBC World Service - 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy, ElevatorSearch BBC

The safety elevator is a mass transit system that has changed the shape of our cities

The safety elevator is an astonishingly successful mass transit system which has changed the very shape of our cities.

In 1853 Elisha Otis climbed onto a platform which was then hoisted high above a large crowd of onlookers, nervy with anticipation. A man with an axe cut the cable, the crowd gasped, and Otis’s platform shuddered – but it did not plunge. “All safe, gentlemen, all safe!” he boomed. The city landscape was about to be turned on its head by the man who had invented not the elevator, but the elevator brake. As Tim Harford explains, the safety elevator is an astonishingly successful mass transit system which has changed the very shape of our cities.

Producer: Ben Crighton
Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon

(Image: Modern Elevator, Credit: iurii/Shutterstock)

Accessibility links

Programme Index

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy

Elevator

Genres

Formats

Brand

BBC World Service Online

About BBC World Service