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Escalators

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Escalators

People take for granted the many things that we use today. Most people never wonder why or how anything that they have come to use operates. Every day, hundreds of people go to shopping malls and places of business, many using a certain item of transportation that they do not even tend to think about. Escalators. Escalators are, in fact, a type of transportation. Just as any vehicle can get you to point A from point B, escalators do the same.

Escalators are a type of transportation moving people using a conveyor type system. It is a moving staircase that moves up or down using a conveyor belt and tracks. The system keeps each step horizontal for the passenger to rest easily in place. However, before they were used for practical transportation, escalators were used more so as amusement. The first patent relating to an escalator like machine was granted in 1859 to Massachusetts resident, Jesse Reno for a steam driven unit. On March 15, 1892, Jesse Reno patented his moving stairs (or inclined elevator as he called it). In 1895, Jesse Reno created a new ride at Coney Island from his patented design, a moving stairway that elevated passengers on a twenty-five degree angle.

The escalator as we know it was later redesigned by Charles Seeberger in 1897, who created the name 'escalator' from the word 'scala', which is Latin for steps and the word 'elevator', which had already been invented. Charles Seeberger, together with the Otis Elevator Company produced the first commercial escalator in 1899 in New York. The Seeberger-Otis wooden escalator won first prize at the Paris 1900 Exposition Universelle in France. Jesse Reno's Coney Island ride success briefly made Jesse Reno into "the" escalator designer and he founded the Reno Electric Stairways and Conveyors company in 1902.Charles Seeberger sold his patent rights for the escalator to the Otis Elevator Company in 1910, who also bought Jesse Reno's escalator patent in 1911. Otis then came to dominate escalator production. In the 1920s, Otis engineers, led by David Lindquist, combined and improved the Jesse Reno and Charles Seeberger escalator designs, and created the cleated level steps of the modern escalator in use today.

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