Lawrence Kestenbaum's

Elevator Page

General Resources

• Elevator World magazine
• National Association of Elevator Contractors.
• Ray Griffin's Elevator Max.
• Elevator Info: Elevator Wiring Diagrams, Manuals, and Engineering Releases.
• Elevator Gear: buy, sell, and trade elevator equipment.

• Elevator Man Stories (see also earlier site).
• Elevator Problem Discussion, at Greenspun.com
• Elevators.com e-forum to discuss elevator-related issues: parts, service, legal, etc.
• Going Up, art photography of elevators
• Elevators, Escalators, Movingwalks, Travators, Dumbwaiters and all vertical transportation and related equipment: safety, engineering, management issues (membership by invitation only)

• The Elevator and the City, Northwestern University Library.

• The Museum for the Preservation of Elevating History (designed and maintained by Elevator World)
• Elevator History (Columbia Elevator)
• Elevator History and FAQs (Ray Griffin)
• History of the Elevator and Elisha Graves Otis (About.com)
• History of Elevators (Otis.com)
• History of Elevators (Delta Elevator)
• A discussion of racial segregation on elevators, as seen in Atlanta (by a white Northern journalist) in 1906.

• Certified Elevator & Escalator Products Company, Inc.
• Columbia Elevator
• Delta Elevator
• Electra Vitoria S. Coop.
• KONE Elevators.
• McKinley Elevator.
• Mitsubishi Elevator.
• Otis Elevators.
• Schindler: The Elevator and Escalator Company.
• ThyssenKrupp Elevator (including former Dover Elevators)

• Elevator Cartoons (Elevator World's large collection)
• Movie cliches about elevators.

• Elevator and Escalator Safety Foundation.
• Vertical Analysis: Escalator Safety.
• National Association of Elevator Safety Authorities.
• Politicians killed in elevator accidents (actually only one politician), from The Political Graveyard.
• Articles about a drowning involving an elevator, in Houston, Texas, 2001:
  • Woman drowns when elevator floods in basement, Houston Chronicle, June 9, 2001
  • Elevator drowning victim identified, Houston Chronicle, June 9, 2001
  • Lawsuit filed in flood drowning, Houston Chronicle, August 14, 2001
  • Life Support (commenting on case), Dr. Dobbs Journal, November 2001
• Articles in Risks Digest about a fatal elevator accident in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, 1989:
  1. by Walter Roberson, in issue 8.48 (excerpt from news story).
  2. by Walter Roberson, in issue 8.50 (followup).
  3. by Eric Roskos, in issue 8.50 (commentary).
  4. by John Luce, in issue 8.52 (rebuttal).
• Dr. Hitoshi Nikaidoh's decapitation death, Houston, Texas, 2003:
  • Houston Chronicle story (copied at aarrgghh.com)
  • Snopes.com
• Early 20th Century: Elevator Accidents in Chicago (over four hundred deaths between 1904 and 1916).
• Elevator Fatalities (Google Answers)

Books About Elevators

• General:
  • Alisa Goetz, Up, Down, Across: Elevators, Escalators, and Moving Sidewalks
  
  
• Literary:
  • Colson Whitehead, The Intuitionist, a novel about elevator inspectors
  • Douglas Evans, The Elevator Family (for young readers), a novel about a family living in a hotel elevator
  
  
• Historical:
  • Jason Goodwin, Otis: Giving Rise to the Modern City
  • Kerstin Englert/Alfred Englert, Lifts in Berlin/Fahrstuhle in Berlin: 100 Years of History/Eine 100Jahrige Geschichte
  • Vittorio Magnago/Lutz Hartwig, Vertical, Elevators, Escalators, Paternosters: A Cultural History of Vertical Transport
  
  
• Technical:
  • Gina Carol Barney, Elevator Traffic Handbook: Theory and Practice
  • George R. Strakosch, The Vertical Transportation Handbook

Well one thing that's interesting is how things that are a tiny part of our daily lives turn out to have a whole culture behind them. There are people thinking about elevators all day long, talking about elevators, holding elevator conventions, drawing elevator cartoons to share with their elevator buddies, etc. It's like the fractal nature of human culture. Any tiny bit you look at, turns out to be a whole world, one that is both familiar and strange. Jan Wolter cyberspace.org October 4, 2002

Webmaster: Lawrence Kestenbaum, creator of The Political Graveyard web site; email kestenbaum @ gmail.com
Page created, February 14, 1997; last updated January 28, 2009