The history of Otis is an amazing story. The reason American elevators can't fall but a few feet is a triumph of physics but mostly because the engineers were such very practical people.
They really were concerned that their inventions first, did no harm. They were the doctors of the building trade even if they did not take the Hippocratic Oath.
And no I am not related to any of them but once was on an elevator that was sabotaged but held up after a fall of about 13 inches. We were rescued with a minimum of fuss and other than being scared, we were all fine. And there we hung with three of the cables cut and one damaged but no fears. . .Otis to the rescue even though he was dead long before this happened.
My recommendations is to always look for the name Otis on the foot plate of the elevator.
United Technologies’ Otis Elevator unit, which is the world’s largest elevator maker, avoided trapped customers during Japan’s earthquakes courtesy of seismic detectors.
Bloomberg BusinessWeek detailed the technology behind Otis’ efforts in Japan. Among the key figures:
- Otis has 80,000 elevators and 2,400 Japanese employees.
- In 48 hours following the quake, Otis took 13,00 calls into its 21 call centers.
- 16,700 elevators in areas hit by the earthquakes shut down.
- Of that 16,700 units, 16,400 were restarted in 7 days.
The star of this tale was Otis’ seismic detectors. The elevators are engineered to go to the ground floor at the first vibration from a quake. From the ground floor, passengers can exit. The Otis elevators won’t start up again until Otis’ can check them out.
Otis’ system worked well. So well that there weren’t any trapped or injured passengers.
