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50 Things That Made the Modern Economy

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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.

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50 Things That Made the Modern Economy: Elevator

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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)

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Elevator

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