Passenger elevator in our life

The major hotel chains have learned long ago never to design a hotel with a sleeping room adjacent to an elevator hoistway. They also try to design so that the machine rooms are as distant as possible from the guests. Architects know not to put the CEOs office adjacent to the hoistways nor near the machine rooms. Hydraulic Passenger Elevator pump units anchored to a concrete slab over earth will likely be less problematic than locating the pump unit on an upper floor. New overhead traction drive machines are now commonly isolated whereas basement traction drive machines are not. The concrete floor slab or anchorage block directly over earth are often effective in deadening vibration. So, where equipment is located can make a big difference in the transmission of vibration and the severity of the noise problem.

An elevator is an enclosed car that moves in a vertical shaft between the multi-story floors of a building carrying passengers or freight. All elevators are based on the principle of the counterweight, and modern elevators also use geared, electric motors and a system of cables and pulleys to propel them. The world's most often used means of mechanical transportation, it is also the safest. The elevator has played a crucial role in the development of the high-rise or skyscraper and is largely responsible for how our cities look today. It has become an indispensable factor of modern urban life.

Elevators and escalators are potential sources of serious injuries and deaths to the general public and to workers installing, repairing, and maintaining them and fire and rescue personnel. Common injuries are tripping, caught clothing, being hit by closing elevator doors, or falling down an elevator shaft when trying to exit a stalled elevator car. Workers are at risk also, for instance, when cleaning elevator shafts, conducting emergency evacuations of stalled elevators, or doing construction near open shafts. State and local authorities recognize such hazards and require periodic inspections of elevators and escalators.

Developed in the 19th century, elevators transformed urban living, real estate markets and skylines around the world. As a FUJI research fellow, Ms. Christy gets to work on the toughest problems and on signature projects like the 1,483-foot-high Petronas Towers in Malaysia, for a time the world's tallest building.

During the recent $550 million upgrade of the Empire State Building, Ms. Christy was asked whether she could help get more people up to the observation deck. She said she couldn't get more people into a car but could move them up more quickly. So she increased the elevators' speed by 20%, to 20 feet per second. Now the cars can rise 80 floors in about 48 seconds, 10 seconds faster than before.

Ms. Christy strikes down one common myth—that "door close" buttons don't work. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't, she says. It depends on the building's owner.

The challenges she deals with depend on the place. At a hotel in the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, she has to make sure that the elevators can clear a building quickly enough to get most people out five times a day for prayer.

Passenger elevators transformed the way we build. Buildings of just a few levels extended to skyscrapers because an elevator makes navigating multiple levels far easier for us to accomplish. In recent decades, development of the elevator has reached new Fuji Lift. Today, passenger elevators are an integral part of most multi-level buildings, designed to recognize our destination and take us there safely in seconds.