August 19, 2014 • 43 mins
Elevators are way more interesting than you might think. In this week's episode, Chuck and Josh board the lift to enlighten everyone as to the ins and outs, and ups and downs, of these handy people movers.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to you stuff you should know Frondhouse stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. And Josh Clark,
There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and Jerry. Jerry has a
personal story in this one that I teased in the
(00:21):
n s A podcast That's right, which were recorded like
weeks ago. Jerry has been stuck and rescued from an elevator. Jerry,
it turns out, was stuck in an elevator, a crowded
elevator for four hours, crowded with the NASCAR people, as
it turns out, Yeah, NASCAR fans who were in town
(00:41):
for a race, I guess right. And she had to
get rescued through the top through the top. Yeah, which
we learned from this research. You can't get yourself out
through that top because it's bolted on the other side. Yeah,
you gotta have someone come. It's for them to get
you out, not for you to get yourself out. Sorry.
John McClean, Yeah, what you did is impossible. And there
(01:02):
weren't even bolts on his then he just like kicked
it up exactly. I think there was like a screen. Yeah,
this ended up being way more interesting than I thought. Well,
let's get to the interesting stuff. Okay, So chuck um,
we can begin to begin by talking about elevators and
(01:23):
who invented them. Yes, and it should come as no
surprise because if I had a dime for every time
we sat in the studio and said it started in
ancient Rome, it seems like everything started in ancient Rome
or China. Um. But in ancient Rome they did use
um you could call an elevator. It was a lift. Yeah,
(01:44):
it's not like an enclosed elevator, but it was you know,
like a platform with pulleys that they would lift things up.
Especially doing the work of an elevator, they used people
livestock water screws, which means Archimedes was involved, that's right. Yeah,
you know and of a friend in New Jersey, a
bartender who when you would ask what the score of
(02:06):
the game was a football game, he would just breathe
by and go lion stand Christians, nothing, no matter who
was playing. This one of those bartender jokes. You know.
He'd imagine he said it a million times and probably
got it from someone else. Just an aside. Well, but
we're talking about as far back as UM three six PC.
Archimedes was in ancient Greek, the Syracusian maybe, Yeah, he
(02:30):
was from Syracuse, Orange Orange, um and uh So, elevators
and the concept in the functioning elevator has been around
for a very long time. Um. It wasn't until the
nineteenth century, though, that they really started to take shape
in a way that we see them now. They were
(02:51):
basically just these platforms that lifted you up and you
needed an ox. I think we should talk about Louis.
Um which one is he x V man I always
get that backwards. He's not a super bowl. Yeah. King
Louis he had what some people say it was the
(03:13):
first modern type elevator with his flying chair. It was
on the outside of her Sailles and his mistress. It
was built for Madam the Chateau rou Um. This sounds
like a made up name. No, that was her name,
and she lived up on the third floor and would
go sit in her little box and lower herself down
(03:35):
right to the king's balcony. Um and they would do
the devil's business and it was very, um, very convenient
for him. He also had flying tables at dinner that
would uh lower food right at his chair like a
dumb waiter. A really dumb waiter, and he would, you know,
(03:56):
clap his hands, I guess, and call for the flying table,
which bring bringing bring me another guinea hen yeah, I
love guinea hens um dumb waiter, by the way, it's
a pretty insensitive term for that thing. Sure, you know.
And lazy Susan, what's out all about? That's very derogatory.
Did you know that lazy Susan was supposedly invented by
(04:19):
a Chinese American restaurant tour at Chinese restaurants, that's where
they're invented named Susan. Did you know that that it
was invented in a restaurant, in a Chinese restaurant, and
like San Francisco and like the fifties or forties, it
doesn't but that's what it's used for. So it's uh,
(04:39):
is that some revelations, Okay, I would have guessed like
like it was invented around the same time as and
by the same people as who invented like the butter
Church time frame, is what you were remarked. I thought
the Chinese restaurant kind of threw me off to the
whole thing. So at any rate, elevators have been around
for a while. What are the fift it's got clever.
(05:01):
He had one that used the system of ropes and pulleys,
which conceivably his flying chair was conceivably the first elevator,
the first modern elevator ever built. But it wasn't until
the nineteenth century, like I said, that they started to
really take shape. And they still had like the kind
that were used for industrial purposes like for mining or
store houses or things like that. Um, but then passenger
(05:23):
elevators really started to take shape. The problem was they
were extraordinarily dangerous. People died. A lot of people died
if you had a rope system, a rope system, cable system,
or tension system. Those are three names for the same thing,
which basically uses a pulley and a rope to lower
(05:46):
and raise a box that used stand in and your
human being. That's that kind of elevator, as opposed to
a hydraulic pistons system, which is what they used pre
industrial revolutions, which makes a lot of sense. Now I'm
sorry they used it posted industrial revolution, but pre rope
and pulley system modern elevator the kind we see now. Yeah,
(06:06):
but you couldn't have a very tall building because you're
your piston had to draw down, and if you wanted
to go up, you had to draw that thing down
just as far. Yeah, the piston had to be as
tall as the floor of the tallest floor of the building.
And then yeah, you had to have that pit that
was equally deep. Right, that's right, that's a deep pit
(06:27):
if it's a tall Building's right, it's not so we
so yes, that is a little segue that humanity took
with the piston or hydraulic elevator, and apparently they were
still um popular in mansions. And have you ever seen
the movie Lady in a Cage. Uh, it's a black
and white movie with the Jimmy Khan overacting like a
(06:48):
crazy as a hoodlum in like the fifties. Um, And
I can't remember the name of the famous star who's
the woman in the cage. But the cage is an
elevator that's trapped between floor in our mansion and things
go really badly for it's a good movie. Not have
to check that out. Um. But the rope and pulley system,
(07:08):
the reason why it didn't become the modern elevator until
the eighteen fifties is because there was no safety mechanism,
those ropes would break, and like you said, a lot
of people died because the whole thing we just go
all the way down to the of the shafts and
kill everybody on board. There's nothing to stop it, which
is uh, some people's greatest fear is being on And
(07:30):
we'll get to that stuff later, like what might happen? Yes,
we will teaser. But along came a guy named Elijah Otis,
whose last name you might recognize. Yeah, in eighteen fifty two,
he and his sons, uh said, you know what these
things need, They need a safety device some people don't die,
and so they created and debuted very famously the safety
(07:50):
Hoist the fifty four New York World's Fair when he
dramatically got in and said, cut the rope, and they
cut the rope and it fell like a foot and
then the safety device break and everyone went, wow, that's awesome.
It worked, that's right, And it's like it was attested
on a spring and as long as the rope was tense,
(08:11):
the spring would stay tripped, tripped, no untripped. And then
when the tension was released, because the rope is no
longer there, the spring will go and those the breaks
like you said, would come out, and that's basically still
in use today. A lot of elevators like this thing
that he created in eighteen fifty two. It's it's they
still build it into brand new elevators today. Yeah, some
(08:34):
of them they'll have uh, you know, it's a notch,
notches cut into the railing that guides the elevator. So
when those little things spring out, it just clicks into
the next notch. Some wedges go into them and they
can't go any further. And you're like, oh, man, thank
God for Elijah Otis and his sons. Right. So a
lot of people say, well, Elijah Otis invented the elevator,
the modern elevator. He did not. Actually, he invented the
(08:57):
safety mechanism, invented the non killing elevator that that allowed
rope and pulley systems to become ubiquitous and used in
all sorts of buildings for people to trust them. And
so he probably created the modern elevator industry is a
better way to put it. Yeah. I mean he formed
an elevator company and the Otis brothers and did pretty
well with it. But there was another Yeah, he's dead,
(09:21):
but his company's doing great. Yeah, I think like eight
percent of elevators or Otis elevators. But he's dead. He's
very much dead. He this was well over a hundred
and fifty years ago. There's another Otis who is contemporaneous
to Elijah Otis, but his first name was Otis Otis Toughs. Yeah,
what are the chances? Apparently pretty high? Yeah, so this
(09:44):
Otis Toughs fella. He actually invented what we would recognize
as the first modern elevator a couple of years before
Elijah Otis got his patent on his safety mechanism, and
it was basically a car, yeah, with automatically opening and
closing doors. There were benches, which all of the early
(10:07):
elevators had, which apparently we'll get too later, is why
we all face forward? Yeah, well sure, that's one reason,
and just to not be weird it's another one. But
he had a really good idea that was extraordinarily safe.
The Otis um tufted. His elevator was basically had a
(10:28):
hole going through the middle that was threaded, and so
his elevator acted like a nut that was going around
a very long screw that went from top to bottom.
That's what the elevator went up on. So I guess
you would turn the screw and the thing would probably
be pulled down or pulled up, and it would it would.
There's no safety issues whatsoever. But it was very impractical
(10:51):
because it was very expensive. And again, this screw would
have to be at least as tall as the building.
That's a that's a big yeah. So he was not
able to sell a lot of them. He did, okay,
but it wasn't widely adopted because it was just impractical.
Everybody yeah and said, hey, these Otis brothers have really
got it going on because they're safe, they're efficient, and
(11:14):
we can scale this out. You know, it's a scalable product. Um.
So that's the story of how the elevator came to be. Yeah,
that's the end of that one, right, all right, Well,
right after this break, we are going to talk a
little bit about safety mechanisms and why you don't faulter
your death now. All right, So we talked a little
(11:47):
bit about some of the safety, but let's talk a
little bit about the how an elevator works. UM. Modern
elevators use a cable system where the cable is looped
over a sheave. It's very simple actually, and I say cable,
but several cables, uh, and it is just has a
(12:08):
grooved rim surface the sheep does. And it's just basically
there's a counterweight on the other side. Elevator goes up,
counterweight goes down. Elevator goes down, counterweight goes up. Each
of those cables, by law, is required to be able
to hold the elevator fully loaded plus and by itself.
(12:29):
But there's still like four to seven eight cables usually
per elevator car. So you would have to have all
of those eight snap in order to put yourself even
in the slightest bit of danger. But that's when other
fail safes come into play to help you from dying. Right,
So you're the elevator cables are not going to snap
(12:51):
pretty much ever, because not only are there um all
of these extra cables, there elevator inspectors who examine the
cables to make sure there's nothing wrong with them, and
he's like, seven of these are shot, but you still
got the one, so it's fine. Um, So it's the
cable snapping is not going to be a problem. But
if if all of the cables did snap, if somebody
(13:13):
got up there and cut through them within a seedling torch.
Let's just say that happened you you the car, the
elevator car would basically fall about two ft because remember
we talked about that thing that was invented by Elijah
Otis that's still in use today. Well, there are some
things that are UM connected to governors. The cables that
(13:35):
are bolted to the top of the car and run
through the sheave, which is basically a giant pulley. They
also go through a governor speed governor, and when that
governor starts spinning really fast, which tells it that that the
cables are spinning really fast, it automatically trips those wedges
which go into the grooves into the rail that the
elevator car runs on. So it'll fall about two feet. Yeah,
(13:56):
and that's if it has I mean, there are different
kinds of breaking systems, but that is certainly one. Another
one is uh this kind of um break shoe basically
that goes around the rail like a roller coaster, right
and then um when the governor pulley senses that it's
spinning too fast, it trips those and they just gripped
the rail. Either way, you're gonna fall just a feet
(14:18):
a foot or two. Yeah, And I don't think we
said that this is it's an electric motor that spins
the sheath that pulls the cables up and down, right,
I thought that was obvious, But we should point that out.
We should. And it's a pretty elegant system actually, because
the counterweight and the elevator weigh fairly close to the
same um. So the motor that's running the sheave only
(14:41):
has to overcome the force of friction to basically tip
the balance between the two so that whichever one is
lower will pull the other one down. So that's how
an elevator goes up and down. So let's say the
cables have been cut, and this diabolical villain that once
you dead in a very expensive and time consuming there's
a lot easier ways to kill somebody um has also
(15:03):
somehow removed all of the safeties. That's what in elevator jargon,
the safety mechanism are called safeties. That's the fact of
the podcast. Uh what happens then? So you're saying, let's
you are just plummeting, you're free say free fall, But
as this article points out, it's not quite freefall. Because
(15:24):
there's gonna be friction because it is on on rails
and you can't be and you're not in a vacuum. No,
you're And what's more, because you're not in a vacuum,
there's air beneath you, and this elevator car that is
takes up most of the space and the shaft um
is compressing the air beneath it, so it's creating a
cushion of air. And like you said, the friction from
(15:46):
the rails is slowing the whole thing down. So yeah,
you're not gonna enter free fall, which is where there's
no force of gravity exerted on you at all. No,
you're gonna be slowed down, but you're definitely gonna feel
like you're falling. You know, you're gonna be moving at
a of speed, a dangerous rate of speed. But at
the very bottom there are shock absorbers built in. And
it looks like, I mean, a big springy, spongy thing,
(16:10):
and that's basically what it is. It's a cylinder, uh
piston filled with oil usually and so that'll help you
out a little bit too, probably keep you from getting killed. Yeah,
depending on where you fall from. And there's apparently one
instance in the history of elevators, at least in America,
that um where actually happened. Yeah, where these cars have
(16:31):
fallen modern elevator cars have fallen from a significant height. Um.
And that was in when a Bift two bomber accidentally
ran into the another World Trade Center, the Empire State
Building and basically cut the cables, the safety breaks, everything
on two elevator cars that dropped from the seventy ninth floor. Yeah,
(16:55):
it's happened once, all the way down and the one
woman who was a board survived. That's seventy nine floors,
that's eight h ft. It's a long way. Yeah, and
that was in that was cushioning, right, you know, imagine
it's a little better now. Well. One of the things
that saved her though, is that she was in the
(17:15):
corner of the car m because the cable, the elevator
cable started to coil up beneath it as it fell
down through the through the bottom of the car, and
it was you know, she was drunk, and you know
what they say, it's a cigarette the whole drunk. Then
I think your body is that a is that a
(17:37):
misnomer that your body like can accept, Like an accident
more readily if you're drunk, because it doesn't stiffen up.
I've always heard that might be a wives tale. All right,
So let's talk a little bit about if you are
going to die or suffer a devastating injury on an elevator,
chances are no, Um, you have a point zero zero
(18:00):
ro zero zero zero zero one five percent chance of
dying on your average elevator ride. How did you come
up with that number? Well, how you do any average?
You multiply? Well, we don't get into the math of it.
Eight billion passenger trips on elevator per year. Seven people
die on average per year UM. And most of those
(18:22):
are people that work on elevators UM repairing them. So
your chances are they say, greater of getting struck and
killed by lightning, and everyone knows that's not you know,
you shouldn't worry about dying in an elevator. And it
says that escalators are ten times safer. That's not necessarily true.
That's what the elevator people say. It depends. They did
(18:44):
a study of senior citizens with like a median age
and I think eighty years UM, and found that there
were higher um, there were a higher number of um
accidents on escalators, but zero fatality. He's over this fourteen
year period, there's fatalities and elevator accidents. And we should say,
(19:05):
like there's a very very slow or slim chance of
being injured in an elevator. What did you say? Point
zero zero zero zero zero zero one five. That's a
small chance, but it does happen. Yeah, and if you
and if you do die in an elevator accident, it's
(19:27):
gonna be pretty gnarly. Have you did you see the
lady in China? Yeah? I mean, well, there's there's all
kinds of stories that will put the fear of God
into you. Um. This this one lady Suzanne Heart in
two thousand eleven and at Exaci, New York, stepped onto
her elevator, the door closed on her, grabbed her and
took off up the shaft and killed her, and not
(19:51):
in a pleasant way. Now, that same week, a woman
at cal State Long Beach had the exact same thing
happened to her as she was stepping on the elevator.
The car just suddenly went up and took her with it.
They cut her in a half. Yeah. Wow. Um. A
nurse in China, same thing happened to her, apparently. Statistically speaking,
(20:12):
if you're going to be injured by a malfunctioning or
killed by a malfunctioning elevator, it's going to be while
you're getting on or off and the thing starts moving
up without you realizing that it's about to happen. Because
if it does happen, it happens pretty quick. Yeah. I
started since reading this, I started getting on and off
of elevators for very fast. Well, that's one thing that
you should do. You should also pay attention to to
(20:34):
your surroundings, what's going on. That's that's the problem, because
getting on and off of an elevator is a pretty
mindless thing to do. And as um Nick PLOWM. Gartner
points out, who wrote probably the greatest article anyone's ever
written on elevators in the history of humanity. It's in
the New Yorker. It's called up and then Down? And
(20:56):
how many articles did you read to compare it to
just this one? Dude? I would put it up against
any other article you can come up with. There's someone
out there that wrote one. This like Josh didn't even
look at mine. I would read it. If they thought
it compared anyway. He points out that not only is
it like a mindless thing getting on and off of
an elevator, we don't even think about what's going on
(21:19):
during the elevator ride, like we our brains are basically
like I'm on a leven, I get in, go through
these doors, and now I get out of the doors
and I'm on. Well. Yeah, and people they've done studies
like it that way. Um. Other they've thought about, hey,
maybe we should um make the elevator clear so people
(21:40):
can see what's going on, and that people round me said, no,
I don't want a clear elevator. I don't want to
see those cables. I want to get in my little
box and get spit out on whatever floor I pushed
the button for and the whole um you know, music, Yeah,
music came about to um to calm people down on elevators,
(22:05):
to drown out the noise of the elevator mechanism working,
and just to to calm people down. Yeah, because if
you're elevator phobic, it means almost that you are claustrophobic
and you don't like being in that small space with
those people. And experts say that if you have a
(22:26):
big elevator fear. You just got basically your fight or
flight responses being hijacked in the situation that's truly not
dangerous because when that's when it's supposed to kick in.
But the idea of being trapped in Jerry's case with
NASCAR fans is enough to make her possibly hyperventilate and
have a panic attack. Uh if she is also claustrophobic,
(22:46):
which about five percent of people are, well, I think
elevator phobia and claustrophobia overlap kinda, but they're not one
and the same right now. Okay, that's what you're saying. Yeah, okay, Um,
how do you get over that? Well? I mean it
could be genetic. Some people think that phobias like that
our genetic. Others think that it comes from being trapped
(23:09):
in something when you were a kid and comes out
later when you could always go to the CBT route
and have a doctor lock you in a small box
over and over until you get used to it. I
think that's basically what they do. I think also though, um,
probably the more common therapy would be exposure therapy, where
(23:30):
you and your doctor go to the elevator down the
hall in the doctor's office building, and um go up
and down a couple of times. I read an l
A Times article about this um, this psychologist who treated
people with a fear of elevators, and she said that,
you know, you start out by just looking at the
elevator and then maybe getting on for a second, then
(23:51):
getting right back off, you know. And she said, over
the course of probably about ten rides, by the tenth one,
it's gone. Yeah. So it's it's true. Table it's very treatable,
but it's it's I read another article in the New
York Times about this woman who said, I have a
phobia of elevators. That's so bad, I don't even want
to confront it, Like I don't want to get over it.
(24:11):
That's too much of a hill to climb to get
to the other side, even if it just took ten
elevator rides, Like that's just too much. And people who
have elevator phobia's lives are altered because of their fear
of elevators, Like there's lots of places they can't work. Um,
even if you work on the second floor of the building,
if the buildings lock and the doors and to the
(24:36):
stairs locked behind you, like us Yeah, then it doesn't
matter if you work on the second floor. You could
only conceivably work on the first floor. Yeah. We don't
have the option of taking the stairs here because I've
made that mistake taking a private call on the stairwell
and you get locked out, you gotta walk all the
way down. Yeah. And some people, I imagine too, have
fear of heights. Um. And one of my friends moms
(24:57):
couldn't stay above like the third floor of a hotel
even really yeah, I mean even when the blinds closed
and everything. She just she knew she was high up
and that freaked her out. For that reason, I can't
stand glass outdoor elevators. Yeah, we forgot we shot a scene.
Oh that was not fun. Was that the peach tree
or the inside the Marriott here? But the Marriott here
(25:19):
is a very cool interior glass elevator that goes up
really high. And um, yeah, I remember. You did a
good job though. Well, yeah, it was fine on that.
It was that sky car at Stone Mountain that got me.
Oh did the sky bucket thing? Yeah, it just takes
you from one side of the park to the other. Yeah. Yeah,
the thing that you split off of No, it's enclosed oh,
(25:44):
the one I rode was just like a ski lift. Basically,
didn't we shoot it stone one? Oh no, no, no, okay,
I know what you're talking about. I thought you're talking
about six flags the sky bucket. I probably wouldn't like
that either. Yeah, you're talking about the the tram that
takes you to the top of some mountain. It is
fully enclosed. Yes, and remember there's like a poll going
(26:06):
through the middle that I was holding onto and just
staring at the floor. Well, that's one of those things
where if they have to stop it, it like swings
back and forth and you're reminded, I'm hanging from a
cable on a big, heavy car. Okay, So we'll talk
about some elevator etiquette tips. We're gonna help you be
a better human being. Apparently all right after these messages.
(26:29):
Hey Chuck, Hey dude, we love squares space, don't we. Yeah,
we sure do. They are the go to tool for
building online websites, which is the only place your website
should be. That's a good point. And not only will
you have a website, but it's gonna be super good looking.
People are gonna think you're a design pro. It's all
based on dragon Drop, very intuitive, you don't need to
learn how to code, and they have awesome customer support,
(26:53):
email support, live chat. It's all there right for the taking.
And if you want to make some money with your website,
all plans of commerce options, so from hosting an entire
story to accepting donations, Squarespace has you covered. Plus because
they're a modern company. Your website is gonna look great
on every device, your laptop, your tablet, even on your
mobile phone, and that is important, Chuckers, sure is so right.
(27:14):
Now you can try squarespace risk free. Go to squarespace
dot com slash stuff for a free fourteen day trial
with no credit card necessary. Chuck and I put our
credit cards down so you guys don't have to. That's right.
And if you like the product, and we know you will,
it only costs as low as eight dollars a month
after that includes a free domain name if you sign
up for one year. Yep. If you use the offer
(27:35):
code stuff, you can get ten percent off your first
purchase too. So go to squarespace dot com slash stuff
and use our offer code stuff. You'll love it all right.
There's a couple of people that I think are awesome.
Uh one. His name was Edward Hall, and he's a
scientist in the nineteen sixties that invented proximics, which is
(27:58):
basically studies how much personal space people like. And what
he found out is Americans have four different categories of
personal space. Public space, which he found that people like
to be twelve ft apart from one another, social space
four ft, personal space a foot and a half, and
(28:19):
then what he calls intimate space, which is um right
up on somebody. Yeah. The other guy is a dude
named John J. Frewan, and he wrote something in nineteen
seventy one called the Pedestrian Planning and Design, uh just
called Pedestrian Planning and Design. It is the go to
handbook for if you want to build a subway or
(28:42):
if you want to build an elevator car or anything
where you're squashing people together. That is still the go
to for how many how many jerks can we fit
in this box? Right? So that was comfortably and safely right,
That was all taking in consideration and all of those things,
what those are not taking the consideration on our elevator
cars like they they basically go way beyond that foot
(29:07):
and a half of personal space. Well, yeah, it goes
by weight only, right, Yeah, and if if it's a
busy time, all of a sudden, you can find yourself
with like an intimate space with all these other people
around you in a tiny little box. So let's talk
etiquette when you do find yourself in a situation like that.
One really good way to prevent being in a crowded
(29:30):
elevator car and from stopping people in an elevator car
unnecessarily is following what's called the two flight rule, which
we can't do here at our office. No, we're an exception.
And the reason why we're in exceptions because if we
tried to take the stairs, the doors locked behind you
and you're trapped in the stairwell and you have to
go back down to the ground floor, which is the
(29:51):
one door that's unlocked. Right, that's right. Why do I
feel like we're helping a stalker? Like the schematics of
the building, They're like, oh, that's an interesting in detail.
You will regret sharing that. Do we have stockers, No,
they're all trapped in the stairwell. That's who those people are.
The two flight rule is basically says that if you
(30:13):
are going one to two flights up. Take the stairs
instead of the elevator keeps people from having to wait. Yeah,
well you get off a distance that you could have
conceivably walked, and should for your own health walk. Another rule, Uh,
they always touchy. Do you hold the door for someone
or not? Um? I always think of curb your enthusiasm.
(30:37):
Did you ever see that one when Larry uh feigned
as if he was going to hold the door open
and wouldn't do it. I didn't see that one. I
would have assumed that that topic would have covered like
six consecutive episodes. Now he very obviously was like, oh,
let me reach for this when and then of course
he ends up on the same floor in the same
(30:57):
waiting room as the girl who didn't hold the door
for and I think she does it to him later,
of course, in true TV fashion. But um, the author
of the thing that we read said, if if you're
on the elevator by yourself, you should always hold the
door open for someone. But if there are a bunch
of people on there, you might want to just not
do it and say, hey, get the next one. Yeah,
(31:18):
because you don't have time to take a straw pole
to see what everybody on the elevator, thinks, And you're
not necessarily in charge of everybody, so you don't get
to decide if the door stays open. So the decision
is you can't decide doors are closing on their own exactly.
If it's a full elevator, then yeah, t s yeah.
And it depends on the amount of elevators. Like we
(31:40):
have four elevator banks in our office, and I feel like, yeah,
I feel like, you know, there's gonna be another one
coming very soon. Yeah, So it's not a big deal,
And I don't expect anyone to hold the elevator for me.
In fact, I will say, go, don't like, reach your
hand out and stop the elevators for me, which apparently
(32:03):
is very dangerous. Um, not necessarily reaching your hand out,
but jumping on an elevator with the doors closing. That's
when it's that's you don't want to do that. I
do that all the time. You're not. You do it,
but do it at your own peril at my point
zero zero zero zero zero zero one five risk. Yeah. Um,
here's something I didn't know, chuck. Um. There's you're supposed
(32:27):
to stand in a single file line, no matter how
many elevators there are that that I think that's true. Like,
if you work in the Empire State building, you're going
to get huge lines. But my most office buildings I
don't think have lines. Depending on the size of the
office building, they might have. Uh this type of elevator
(32:47):
call system where you go up to a little keypad
or something, the dispatch system. Yeah, you type in what
floor you're going to, and the computer tells you what
elevator to wait for. You can only take one elevator,
but the elevator is going straight to your floor and
it just waits until enough people to fill it up
come along, and then that sends you on your merry way.
(33:08):
If you don't have that and you do find a line,
supposedly you're supposed to stand in single line. Did not
know that, Well, it may not be true. Again, I
think if you have that many people in your building
to warrant a line, then yeah. But our I mean
ours is pretty big and there's never like a big
crowd of people. Um, but you bring up an important
point here as far as the stops go, and um,
(33:30):
there is a term called elevator ing, which I've never heard,
and that is the discipline of designing an elevator to
work efficiently basically, and one of the things that they
have to look for is uh probable stops and they
have actually calculated this. Um. A guy his last name
is Fortune, has a probable stop table and says that
(33:53):
if there are ten people in an elevator that serves
ten floors, uh, it is going to you're gonna make
six and a half stops on average. That half stuff
is tricky. Ye, ten people on thirty floors nine and
a half stops. Um, So it's just interesting to think about,
Like you can avoid all of that with either the
(34:13):
the dispatch system or uh, like the World Trade Center
had the sky lobby where you could take an express
up to like the thirty floor, get off there and
then get on the local and just go to whatever
before you want to. And then that same guy, um
Mr Fortune, who's an elevator consultant, one of the foremost
ones I gather from that Nick plown Garden article. He
(34:34):
also told plown Garden that there's um you have to
factor in what's called weight time, which basically in an
American office building, supposedly the interval, which is the total
length of time it takes for a single car to
go all the way up and all the way down,
divided by the number of cars. Then you have your
way time that should be no more than thirty seconds,
(34:57):
with the actual weight time being about si that are
eighteen seconds. So in an American office building, you should
not have to wait for longer than eighteen seconds for
an elevator. Yeah, and he's carried it one step further,
which is um you want your handling capacity of the building.
That is the amount of passengers the percentage of passengers
(35:19):
of the building's population that you carry in five minutes,
and he's just thirteen percent is a pretty good target. Yeah,
you want to hit that thirteen percent range. And in general,
in England people are over elevateord and in places like
India and China they are under elevator. Not enough elevators, yep.
But in England they're allows you with them and they're
just carrying one person at a time. Apparently people have
(35:41):
like two three elevators in their house. Uh, Chuck, I
have one for you. Regarding etiquette, Okay, if you are
in an elevator and a man and a woman are
are exiting the elevator at the same time. Uh, should
the man let the woman go first? And where are we?
You are at a guar concert um and it's just
(36:07):
the two of us. I am always one to say
ladies first, But I have seen Miss Manners says in
a corporate environment, you're you should treat everyone equal and
not do things like ladies first and hold the door
open for a lady. And I think the Manners mentor,
Merrily McKee, would like us to correct. She's not Miss
(36:28):
Manners know, is that someone else? Yeah, she's the Manner's mentor,
But she says, if you're in an office environment, people
are supposed to be equal, so you don't have to
let ladies go first. I say, I'm a Southern gentleman,
so I do that kind of thing. If it's a
crowded elevator, it's every person for themselves, like you should
just get off. If you're at the front, you know,
(36:49):
standing in front of the door, it just makes more sense.
It can easily get very clumsy and confusing and just
awkward if you're like, oh well, make it out of
the way, you go first. You know, that's not in
the lady who probably like, who's this create that wants
to get behind me exactly. Uh. And also, if you're
on a crowded elevator and you are in front of
the doors, the proper procedure is to step off and
(37:09):
let people out, um, instead of just trying to wedge
yourself into somebody's groin. You know, just like step off,
the same as if you're on a subway. You can
get right back on. Don't worry. But I see a
lot of people not doing that. I wonder why I don't.
I guess they're lazy jerks. You like, Yeah, you you
(37:29):
step off. If you're the closest of the door, you
step off and you leave your hand there, your arm
then get chopped off. Yeah basically yeah, I mean you're
but you're leaving it. You're keeping it from closing on
the people exiting, but you're also keeping closing from closing
on you. So you can get back on if you're
gonna lose your place, you know, you're a martyr. Yeah.
And then when you step back on, as per the
(37:50):
rules of social norms, according to these people who study it,
everyone just sort of files into the proper place. If
it's just two of you, you're probably should stand you know, well,
apart from each other. There's four of you, you're probably
gonna migrate to the corners, and then if it gets
super full, you're gonna be touching some folks. Yeah, but
(38:10):
normally up till five it follows the face of a die. Yeah, yeah,
that makes sense. Yeah, and you face forward and again
that's supposedly because there used to be benches in the
backs of elevators. It would be so weird if someone
just got on and just walk straight to the back
of the elevator and stood there. Yeah, like that would
(38:31):
freak me out. I would get off that elevator. What
if they just turned around or facing you? No, no, no no,
if they just got on and just walk straight and
just face the back wall, I'd be off of that
thing so fast because they got something up their sleeve
that I don't want to be a part of. But
what if they what if you were towards the back
of the elevator facing front, somebody got on and stayed
by the doors but just turned around it's facing you.
(38:54):
That's equally is creepy. And then there between you and
the door, because I wouldn't even know how to get
out of there safely, I'd probably bowl the dude over
and then he'd be like, what's your problem? You just
start crying? What about your phone? Oh? Well, I mean
this is a personal thing, I guess, but I think
you should never talk on the phone when you're several
(39:14):
feet from a stranger. Barely anybody gets coverage on an
elevator anyway. They just stand there on the phone the
whole time. They did we get cut off. Hello, hold on,
I'm on an elevator. You say, I'll call you back.
I'm on an elevator. Yeah. I wouldn't want to have
my conversations in front of people either. Sure, not that
they're super private, but that's just that's my biz. Sure,
(39:37):
do you got anything else? Uh? No, I do. Um.
If you've seen internet videos about did you see the
one on the the train in Asia where people were
just packing themselves on and like pushing people on like sardines.
Apparently in Asia there is a much much higher tolerance
for personal space when it comes to subways, elevators, and
(40:00):
getting around. Americans have many more hang ups. Well, we
have a huge nation that we've spread out through and
have enormous pockets of unpopulated areas. We like our land
and our fences, good fences make good neighbors. That's it.
I got nothing else. It's elevators pretty much. Seriously, go
(40:20):
read up and then down by Nick plown Gartner in
the New Yorker. It's awesome. Um, and uh, you know
I did have one more thing. Actually, what he makes
an awesome point in there that if it wasn't for elevators,
the world as we know it would not even be
the same because verticality is what has allowed us to
uh grow as people. Um, because if it wasn't for verticality,
(40:45):
we could only expand outward, and there's only so much
outward expansion you can do. So elevators themselves have shaped
the way mankind has has populated this world. Pretty interesting.
It is interesting. Never thought about it before that way.
It's an interesting article through and through, best by far
(41:07):
article ever written on elevators. But we have plenty of
articles on elevators on the site how Stuff Works. You
can type elevators into the search bar there and they'll
bring up a bunch of different articles. You can read those.
And uh, since I said search bar, it's time for
a listener mail. I'm gonna call this you guys may
have legitimately saved our son's life. Wow, right, Hey, guys,
(41:29):
want to say thank you and tell you that it's
quite possible that your show on allergies saved our son's life.
Yesterday and this just came in, so this was very recent. Henry,
our three year old, was playing outside and was stung
by b you near the wrist on his left arm.
I didn't think anything of it because he's been stung
before and not appeared to be allergic with no reaction.
So I made sure the stinger was out and handed
(41:50):
him over to my husband Uh to calm him down. Thankfully,
my husband, Dustin, remember the allergy podcast you did and
how you said sometimes it takes the first exposure for
the body to decide if it's response to a specific allergen.
So Dustin kept a close eye on Henry and noticed
that the left side of his face started to swell
within minutes I know. We rushed into the emergency clinic,
(42:13):
where he received a shot of epinephrin, the dose of anahistamine,
and prescriptions for both immunosuppressants and an EpiPen. He is
doing fine, back to his normal wild self, thanks to
the information, your podcast and Dustin's quick thinking. The first
thing Dustin said to me after leaving the clinic was
you realized stuff you should know saved his life. Right,
that's so cool. I know, thank you for everything you do. Guys.
(42:34):
We always love the podcast, and now I have even
more reason to appreciate it. That is from the Becks, Dustin,
Lindsay Silas, and Henry thanks Beck's permission to read it.
And she asked the husband and he was like, hey, yeah,
people need to get the word out on this stuff. Yeah,
what's your kid after they get stung by beats? Yeah,
don't just laugh at them. Yeah, I would say we
didn't necessarily save anyone's life. That would be more of
(42:58):
the parents, Oh of course, and the medical um emergency people. Yeah,
but we're glad that knowledge could kind of ease that
inch it along. Yeah. So, if we've done anything that
even remotely smacks of saving a life, we always love
hearing about that. Believe it or not, it's happen more
than once. Um. You can tweet to us at s
(43:19):
Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook
dot com slash stuff you should Know. You can send
us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works
dot com and as always, joined us at our home
on the Web. Stuff you Should Know dot com For
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is It
How Stuff Works dot com
Welcome to you stuff you should know Frondhouse stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. And Josh Clark,
There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and Jerry. Jerry has a
personal story in this one that I teased in the
(00:21):
n s A podcast That's right, which were recorded like
weeks ago. Jerry has been stuck and rescued from an elevator. Jerry,
it turns out, was stuck in an elevator, a crowded
elevator for four hours, crowded with the NASCAR people, as
it turns out, Yeah, NASCAR fans who were in town
(00:41):
for a race, I guess right. And she had to
get rescued through the top through the top. Yeah, which
we learned from this research. You can't get yourself out
through that top because it's bolted on the other side. Yeah,
you gotta have someone come. It's for them to get
you out, not for you to get yourself out. Sorry.
John McClean, Yeah, what you did is impossible. And there
(01:02):
weren't even bolts on his then he just like kicked
it up exactly. I think there was like a screen. Yeah,
this ended up being way more interesting than I thought. Well,
let's get to the interesting stuff. Okay, So chuck um,
we can begin to begin by talking about elevators and
(01:23):
who invented them. Yes, and it should come as no
surprise because if I had a dime for every time
we sat in the studio and said it started in
ancient Rome, it seems like everything started in ancient Rome
or China. Um. But in ancient Rome they did use
um you could call an elevator. It was a lift. Yeah,
(01:44):
it's not like an enclosed elevator, but it was you know,
like a platform with pulleys that they would lift things up.
Especially doing the work of an elevator, they used people
livestock water screws, which means Archimedes was involved, that's right. Yeah,
you know and of a friend in New Jersey, a
bartender who when you would ask what the score of
(02:06):
the game was a football game, he would just breathe
by and go lion stand Christians, nothing, no matter who
was playing. This one of those bartender jokes. You know.
He'd imagine he said it a million times and probably
got it from someone else. Just an aside. Well, but
we're talking about as far back as UM three six PC.
Archimedes was in ancient Greek, the Syracusian maybe, Yeah, he
(02:30):
was from Syracuse, Orange Orange, um and uh So, elevators
and the concept in the functioning elevator has been around
for a very long time. Um. It wasn't until the
nineteenth century, though, that they really started to take shape
in a way that we see them now. They were
(02:51):
basically just these platforms that lifted you up and you
needed an ox. I think we should talk about Louis.
Um which one is he x V man I always
get that backwards. He's not a super bowl. Yeah. King
Louis he had what some people say it was the
(03:13):
first modern type elevator with his flying chair. It was
on the outside of her Sailles and his mistress. It
was built for Madam the Chateau rou Um. This sounds
like a made up name. No, that was her name,
and she lived up on the third floor and would
go sit in her little box and lower herself down
(03:35):
right to the king's balcony. Um and they would do
the devil's business and it was very, um, very convenient
for him. He also had flying tables at dinner that
would uh lower food right at his chair like a
dumb waiter. A really dumb waiter, and he would, you know,
(03:56):
clap his hands, I guess, and call for the flying table,
which bring bringing bring me another guinea hen yeah, I
love guinea hens um dumb waiter, by the way, it's
a pretty insensitive term for that thing. Sure, you know.
And lazy Susan, what's out all about? That's very derogatory.
Did you know that lazy Susan was supposedly invented by
(04:19):
a Chinese American restaurant tour at Chinese restaurants, that's where
they're invented named Susan. Did you know that that it
was invented in a restaurant, in a Chinese restaurant, and
like San Francisco and like the fifties or forties, it
doesn't but that's what it's used for. So it's uh,
(04:39):
is that some revelations, Okay, I would have guessed like
like it was invented around the same time as and
by the same people as who invented like the butter
Church time frame, is what you were remarked. I thought
the Chinese restaurant kind of threw me off to the
whole thing. So at any rate, elevators have been around
for a while. What are the fift it's got clever.
(05:01):
He had one that used the system of ropes and pulleys,
which conceivably his flying chair was conceivably the first elevator,
the first modern elevator ever built. But it wasn't until
the nineteenth century, like I said, that they started to
really take shape. And they still had like the kind
that were used for industrial purposes like for mining or
store houses or things like that. Um, but then passenger
(05:23):
elevators really started to take shape. The problem was they
were extraordinarily dangerous. People died. A lot of people died
if you had a rope system, a rope system, cable system,
or tension system. Those are three names for the same thing,
which basically uses a pulley and a rope to lower
(05:46):
and raise a box that used stand in and your
human being. That's that kind of elevator, as opposed to
a hydraulic pistons system, which is what they used pre
industrial revolutions, which makes a lot of sense. Now I'm
sorry they used it posted industrial revolution, but pre rope
and pulley system modern elevator the kind we see now. Yeah,
(06:06):
but you couldn't have a very tall building because you're
your piston had to draw down, and if you wanted
to go up, you had to draw that thing down
just as far. Yeah, the piston had to be as
tall as the floor of the tallest floor of the building.
And then yeah, you had to have that pit that
was equally deep. Right, that's right, that's a deep pit
(06:27):
if it's a tall Building's right, it's not so we
so yes, that is a little segue that humanity took
with the piston or hydraulic elevator, and apparently they were
still um popular in mansions. And have you ever seen
the movie Lady in a Cage. Uh, it's a black
and white movie with the Jimmy Khan overacting like a
(06:48):
crazy as a hoodlum in like the fifties. Um, And
I can't remember the name of the famous star who's
the woman in the cage. But the cage is an
elevator that's trapped between floor in our mansion and things
go really badly for it's a good movie. Not have
to check that out. Um. But the rope and pulley system,
(07:08):
the reason why it didn't become the modern elevator until
the eighteen fifties is because there was no safety mechanism,
those ropes would break, and like you said, a lot
of people died because the whole thing we just go
all the way down to the of the shafts and
kill everybody on board. There's nothing to stop it, which
is uh, some people's greatest fear is being on And
(07:30):
we'll get to that stuff later, like what might happen? Yes,
we will teaser. But along came a guy named Elijah Otis,
whose last name you might recognize. Yeah, in eighteen fifty two,
he and his sons, uh said, you know what these
things need, They need a safety device some people don't die,
and so they created and debuted very famously the safety
(07:50):
Hoist the fifty four New York World's Fair when he
dramatically got in and said, cut the rope, and they
cut the rope and it fell like a foot and
then the safety device break and everyone went, wow, that's awesome.
It worked, that's right, And it's like it was attested
on a spring and as long as the rope was tense,
(08:11):
the spring would stay tripped, tripped, no untripped. And then
when the tension was released, because the rope is no
longer there, the spring will go and those the breaks
like you said, would come out, and that's basically still
in use today. A lot of elevators like this thing
that he created in eighteen fifty two. It's it's they
still build it into brand new elevators today. Yeah, some
(08:34):
of them they'll have uh, you know, it's a notch,
notches cut into the railing that guides the elevator. So
when those little things spring out, it just clicks into
the next notch. Some wedges go into them and they
can't go any further. And you're like, oh, man, thank
God for Elijah Otis and his sons. Right. So a
lot of people say, well, Elijah Otis invented the elevator,
the modern elevator. He did not. Actually, he invented the
(08:57):
safety mechanism, invented the non killing elevator that that allowed
rope and pulley systems to become ubiquitous and used in
all sorts of buildings for people to trust them. And
so he probably created the modern elevator industry is a
better way to put it. Yeah. I mean he formed
an elevator company and the Otis brothers and did pretty
well with it. But there was another Yeah, he's dead,
(09:21):
but his company's doing great. Yeah, I think like eight
percent of elevators or Otis elevators. But he's dead. He's
very much dead. He this was well over a hundred
and fifty years ago. There's another Otis who is contemporaneous
to Elijah Otis, but his first name was Otis Otis Toughs. Yeah,
what are the chances? Apparently pretty high? Yeah, so this
(09:44):
Otis Toughs fella. He actually invented what we would recognize
as the first modern elevator a couple of years before
Elijah Otis got his patent on his safety mechanism, and
it was basically a car, yeah, with automatically opening and
closing doors. There were benches, which all of the early
(10:07):
elevators had, which apparently we'll get too later, is why
we all face forward? Yeah, well sure, that's one reason,
and just to not be weird it's another one. But
he had a really good idea that was extraordinarily safe.
The Otis um tufted. His elevator was basically had a
(10:28):
hole going through the middle that was threaded, and so
his elevator acted like a nut that was going around
a very long screw that went from top to bottom.
That's what the elevator went up on. So I guess
you would turn the screw and the thing would probably
be pulled down or pulled up, and it would it would.
There's no safety issues whatsoever. But it was very impractical
(10:51):
because it was very expensive. And again, this screw would
have to be at least as tall as the building.
That's a that's a big yeah. So he was not
able to sell a lot of them. He did, okay,
but it wasn't widely adopted because it was just impractical.
Everybody yeah and said, hey, these Otis brothers have really
got it going on because they're safe, they're efficient, and
(11:14):
we can scale this out. You know, it's a scalable product. Um.
So that's the story of how the elevator came to be. Yeah,
that's the end of that one, right, all right, Well,
right after this break, we are going to talk a
little bit about safety mechanisms and why you don't faulter
your death now. All right, So we talked a little
(11:47):
bit about some of the safety, but let's talk a
little bit about the how an elevator works. UM. Modern
elevators use a cable system where the cable is looped
over a sheave. It's very simple actually, and I say cable,
but several cables, uh, and it is just has a
(12:08):
grooved rim surface the sheep does. And it's just basically
there's a counterweight on the other side. Elevator goes up,
counterweight goes down. Elevator goes down, counterweight goes up. Each
of those cables, by law, is required to be able
to hold the elevator fully loaded plus and by itself.
(12:29):
But there's still like four to seven eight cables usually
per elevator car. So you would have to have all
of those eight snap in order to put yourself even
in the slightest bit of danger. But that's when other
fail safes come into play to help you from dying. Right,
So you're the elevator cables are not going to snap
(12:51):
pretty much ever, because not only are there um all
of these extra cables, there elevator inspectors who examine the
cables to make sure there's nothing wrong with them, and
he's like, seven of these are shot, but you still
got the one, so it's fine. Um, So it's the
cable snapping is not going to be a problem. But
if if all of the cables did snap, if somebody
(13:13):
got up there and cut through them within a seedling torch.
Let's just say that happened you you the car, the
elevator car would basically fall about two ft because remember
we talked about that thing that was invented by Elijah
Otis that's still in use today. Well, there are some
things that are UM connected to governors. The cables that
(13:35):
are bolted to the top of the car and run
through the sheave, which is basically a giant pulley. They
also go through a governor speed governor, and when that
governor starts spinning really fast, which tells it that that the
cables are spinning really fast, it automatically trips those wedges
which go into the grooves into the rail that the
elevator car runs on. So it'll fall about two feet. Yeah,
(13:56):
and that's if it has I mean, there are different
kinds of breaking systems, but that is certainly one. Another
one is uh this kind of um break shoe basically
that goes around the rail like a roller coaster, right
and then um when the governor pulley senses that it's
spinning too fast, it trips those and they just gripped
the rail. Either way, you're gonna fall just a feet
(14:18):
a foot or two. Yeah, And I don't think we
said that this is it's an electric motor that spins
the sheath that pulls the cables up and down, right,
I thought that was obvious, But we should point that out.
We should. And it's a pretty elegant system actually, because
the counterweight and the elevator weigh fairly close to the
same um. So the motor that's running the sheave only
(14:41):
has to overcome the force of friction to basically tip
the balance between the two so that whichever one is
lower will pull the other one down. So that's how
an elevator goes up and down. So let's say the
cables have been cut, and this diabolical villain that once
you dead in a very expensive and time consuming there's
a lot easier ways to kill somebody um has also
(15:03):
somehow removed all of the safeties. That's what in elevator jargon,
the safety mechanism are called safeties. That's the fact of
the podcast. Uh what happens then? So you're saying, let's
you are just plummeting, you're free say free fall, But
as this article points out, it's not quite freefall. Because
(15:24):
there's gonna be friction because it is on on rails
and you can't be and you're not in a vacuum. No,
you're And what's more, because you're not in a vacuum,
there's air beneath you, and this elevator car that is
takes up most of the space and the shaft um
is compressing the air beneath it, so it's creating a
cushion of air. And like you said, the friction from
(15:46):
the rails is slowing the whole thing down. So yeah,
you're not gonna enter free fall, which is where there's
no force of gravity exerted on you at all. No,
you're gonna be slowed down, but you're definitely gonna feel
like you're falling. You know, you're gonna be moving at
a of speed, a dangerous rate of speed. But at
the very bottom there are shock absorbers built in. And
it looks like, I mean, a big springy, spongy thing,
(16:10):
and that's basically what it is. It's a cylinder, uh
piston filled with oil usually and so that'll help you
out a little bit too, probably keep you from getting killed. Yeah,
depending on where you fall from. And there's apparently one
instance in the history of elevators, at least in America,
that um where actually happened. Yeah, where these cars have
(16:31):
fallen modern elevator cars have fallen from a significant height. Um.
And that was in when a Bift two bomber accidentally
ran into the another World Trade Center, the Empire State
Building and basically cut the cables, the safety breaks, everything
on two elevator cars that dropped from the seventy ninth floor. Yeah,
(16:55):
it's happened once, all the way down and the one
woman who was a board survived. That's seventy nine floors,
that's eight h ft. It's a long way. Yeah, and
that was in that was cushioning, right, you know, imagine
it's a little better now. Well. One of the things
that saved her though, is that she was in the
(17:15):
corner of the car m because the cable, the elevator
cable started to coil up beneath it as it fell
down through the through the bottom of the car, and
it was you know, she was drunk, and you know
what they say, it's a cigarette the whole drunk. Then
I think your body is that a is that a
(17:37):
misnomer that your body like can accept, Like an accident
more readily if you're drunk, because it doesn't stiffen up.
I've always heard that might be a wives tale. All right,
So let's talk a little bit about if you are
going to die or suffer a devastating injury on an elevator,
chances are no, Um, you have a point zero zero
(18:00):
ro zero zero zero zero one five percent chance of
dying on your average elevator ride. How did you come
up with that number? Well, how you do any average?
You multiply? Well, we don't get into the math of it.
Eight billion passenger trips on elevator per year. Seven people
die on average per year UM. And most of those
(18:22):
are people that work on elevators UM repairing them. So
your chances are they say, greater of getting struck and
killed by lightning, and everyone knows that's not you know,
you shouldn't worry about dying in an elevator. And it
says that escalators are ten times safer. That's not necessarily true.
That's what the elevator people say. It depends. They did
(18:44):
a study of senior citizens with like a median age
and I think eighty years UM, and found that there
were higher um, there were a higher number of um
accidents on escalators, but zero fatality. He's over this fourteen
year period, there's fatalities and elevator accidents. And we should say,
(19:05):
like there's a very very slow or slim chance of
being injured in an elevator. What did you say? Point
zero zero zero zero zero zero one five. That's a
small chance, but it does happen. Yeah, and if you
and if you do die in an elevator accident, it's
(19:27):
gonna be pretty gnarly. Have you did you see the
lady in China? Yeah? I mean, well, there's there's all
kinds of stories that will put the fear of God
into you. Um. This this one lady Suzanne Heart in
two thousand eleven and at Exaci, New York, stepped onto
her elevator, the door closed on her, grabbed her and
took off up the shaft and killed her, and not
(19:51):
in a pleasant way. Now, that same week, a woman
at cal State Long Beach had the exact same thing
happened to her as she was stepping on the elevator.
The car just suddenly went up and took her with it.
They cut her in a half. Yeah. Wow. Um. A
nurse in China, same thing happened to her, apparently. Statistically speaking,
(20:12):
if you're going to be injured by a malfunctioning or
killed by a malfunctioning elevator, it's going to be while
you're getting on or off and the thing starts moving
up without you realizing that it's about to happen. Because
if it does happen, it happens pretty quick. Yeah. I
started since reading this, I started getting on and off
of elevators for very fast. Well, that's one thing that
you should do. You should also pay attention to to
(20:34):
your surroundings, what's going on. That's that's the problem, because
getting on and off of an elevator is a pretty
mindless thing to do. And as um Nick PLOWM. Gartner
points out, who wrote probably the greatest article anyone's ever
written on elevators in the history of humanity. It's in
the New Yorker. It's called up and then Down? And
(20:56):
how many articles did you read to compare it to
just this one? Dude? I would put it up against
any other article you can come up with. There's someone
out there that wrote one. This like Josh didn't even
look at mine. I would read it. If they thought
it compared anyway. He points out that not only is
it like a mindless thing getting on and off of
an elevator, we don't even think about what's going on
(21:19):
during the elevator ride, like we our brains are basically
like I'm on a leven, I get in, go through
these doors, and now I get out of the doors
and I'm on. Well. Yeah, and people they've done studies
like it that way. Um. Other they've thought about, hey,
maybe we should um make the elevator clear so people
(21:40):
can see what's going on, and that people round me said, no,
I don't want a clear elevator. I don't want to
see those cables. I want to get in my little
box and get spit out on whatever floor I pushed
the button for and the whole um you know, music, Yeah,
music came about to um to calm people down on elevators,
(22:05):
to drown out the noise of the elevator mechanism working,
and just to to calm people down. Yeah, because if
you're elevator phobic, it means almost that you are claustrophobic
and you don't like being in that small space with
those people. And experts say that if you have a
(22:26):
big elevator fear. You just got basically your fight or
flight responses being hijacked in the situation that's truly not
dangerous because when that's when it's supposed to kick in.
But the idea of being trapped in Jerry's case with
NASCAR fans is enough to make her possibly hyperventilate and
have a panic attack. Uh if she is also claustrophobic,
(22:46):
which about five percent of people are, well, I think
elevator phobia and claustrophobia overlap kinda, but they're not one
and the same right now. Okay, that's what you're saying. Yeah, okay, Um,
how do you get over that? Well? I mean it
could be genetic. Some people think that phobias like that
our genetic. Others think that it comes from being trapped
(23:09):
in something when you were a kid and comes out
later when you could always go to the CBT route
and have a doctor lock you in a small box
over and over until you get used to it. I
think that's basically what they do. I think also though, um,
probably the more common therapy would be exposure therapy, where
(23:30):
you and your doctor go to the elevator down the
hall in the doctor's office building, and um go up
and down a couple of times. I read an l
A Times article about this um, this psychologist who treated
people with a fear of elevators, and she said that,
you know, you start out by just looking at the
elevator and then maybe getting on for a second, then
(23:51):
getting right back off, you know. And she said, over
the course of probably about ten rides, by the tenth one,
it's gone. Yeah. So it's it's true. Table it's very treatable,
but it's it's I read another article in the New
York Times about this woman who said, I have a
phobia of elevators. That's so bad, I don't even want
to confront it, Like I don't want to get over it.
(24:11):
That's too much of a hill to climb to get
to the other side, even if it just took ten
elevator rides, Like that's just too much. And people who
have elevator phobia's lives are altered because of their fear
of elevators, Like there's lots of places they can't work. Um,
even if you work on the second floor of the building,
if the buildings lock and the doors and to the
(24:36):
stairs locked behind you, like us Yeah, then it doesn't
matter if you work on the second floor. You could
only conceivably work on the first floor. Yeah. We don't
have the option of taking the stairs here because I've
made that mistake taking a private call on the stairwell
and you get locked out, you gotta walk all the
way down. Yeah. And some people, I imagine too, have
fear of heights. Um. And one of my friends moms
(24:57):
couldn't stay above like the third floor of a hotel
even really yeah, I mean even when the blinds closed
and everything. She just she knew she was high up
and that freaked her out. For that reason, I can't
stand glass outdoor elevators. Yeah, we forgot we shot a scene.
Oh that was not fun. Was that the peach tree
or the inside the Marriott here? But the Marriott here
(25:19):
is a very cool interior glass elevator that goes up
really high. And um, yeah, I remember. You did a
good job though. Well, yeah, it was fine on that.
It was that sky car at Stone Mountain that got me.
Oh did the sky bucket thing? Yeah, it just takes
you from one side of the park to the other. Yeah. Yeah,
the thing that you split off of No, it's enclosed oh,
(25:44):
the one I rode was just like a ski lift. Basically,
didn't we shoot it stone one? Oh no, no, no, okay,
I know what you're talking about. I thought you're talking
about six flags the sky bucket. I probably wouldn't like
that either. Yeah, you're talking about the the tram that
takes you to the top of some mountain. It is
fully enclosed. Yes, and remember there's like a poll going
(26:06):
through the middle that I was holding onto and just
staring at the floor. Well, that's one of those things
where if they have to stop it, it like swings
back and forth and you're reminded, I'm hanging from a
cable on a big, heavy car. Okay, So we'll talk
about some elevator etiquette tips. We're gonna help you be
a better human being. Apparently all right after these messages.
(26:29):
Hey Chuck, Hey dude, we love squares space, don't we. Yeah,
we sure do. They are the go to tool for
building online websites, which is the only place your website
should be. That's a good point. And not only will
you have a website, but it's gonna be super good looking.
People are gonna think you're a design pro. It's all
based on dragon Drop, very intuitive, you don't need to
learn how to code, and they have awesome customer support,
(26:53):
email support, live chat. It's all there right for the taking.
And if you want to make some money with your website,
all plans of commerce options, so from hosting an entire
story to accepting donations, Squarespace has you covered. Plus because
they're a modern company. Your website is gonna look great
on every device, your laptop, your tablet, even on your
mobile phone, and that is important, Chuckers, sure is so right.
(27:14):
Now you can try squarespace risk free. Go to squarespace
dot com slash stuff for a free fourteen day trial
with no credit card necessary. Chuck and I put our
credit cards down so you guys don't have to. That's right.
And if you like the product, and we know you will,
it only costs as low as eight dollars a month
after that includes a free domain name if you sign
up for one year. Yep. If you use the offer
(27:35):
code stuff, you can get ten percent off your first
purchase too. So go to squarespace dot com slash stuff
and use our offer code stuff. You'll love it all right.
There's a couple of people that I think are awesome.
Uh one. His name was Edward Hall, and he's a
scientist in the nineteen sixties that invented proximics, which is
(27:58):
basically studies how much personal space people like. And what
he found out is Americans have four different categories of
personal space. Public space, which he found that people like
to be twelve ft apart from one another, social space
four ft, personal space a foot and a half, and
(28:19):
then what he calls intimate space, which is um right
up on somebody. Yeah. The other guy is a dude
named John J. Frewan, and he wrote something in nineteen
seventy one called the Pedestrian Planning and Design, uh just
called Pedestrian Planning and Design. It is the go to
handbook for if you want to build a subway or
(28:42):
if you want to build an elevator car or anything
where you're squashing people together. That is still the go
to for how many how many jerks can we fit
in this box? Right? So that was comfortably and safely right,
That was all taking in consideration and all of those things,
what those are not taking the consideration on our elevator
cars like they they basically go way beyond that foot
(29:07):
and a half of personal space. Well, yeah, it goes
by weight only, right, Yeah, and if if it's a
busy time, all of a sudden, you can find yourself
with like an intimate space with all these other people
around you in a tiny little box. So let's talk
etiquette when you do find yourself in a situation like that.
One really good way to prevent being in a crowded
(29:30):
elevator car and from stopping people in an elevator car
unnecessarily is following what's called the two flight rule, which
we can't do here at our office. No, we're an exception.
And the reason why we're in exceptions because if we
tried to take the stairs, the doors locked behind you
and you're trapped in the stairwell and you have to
go back down to the ground floor, which is the
(29:51):
one door that's unlocked. Right, that's right. Why do I
feel like we're helping a stalker? Like the schematics of
the building, They're like, oh, that's an interesting in detail.
You will regret sharing that. Do we have stockers, No,
they're all trapped in the stairwell. That's who those people are.
The two flight rule is basically says that if you
(30:13):
are going one to two flights up. Take the stairs
instead of the elevator keeps people from having to wait. Yeah,
well you get off a distance that you could have
conceivably walked, and should for your own health walk. Another rule, Uh,
they always touchy. Do you hold the door for someone
or not? Um? I always think of curb your enthusiasm.
(30:37):
Did you ever see that one when Larry uh feigned
as if he was going to hold the door open
and wouldn't do it. I didn't see that one. I
would have assumed that that topic would have covered like
six consecutive episodes. Now he very obviously was like, oh,
let me reach for this when and then of course
he ends up on the same floor in the same
(30:57):
waiting room as the girl who didn't hold the door
for and I think she does it to him later,
of course, in true TV fashion. But um, the author
of the thing that we read said, if if you're
on the elevator by yourself, you should always hold the
door open for someone. But if there are a bunch
of people on there, you might want to just not
do it and say, hey, get the next one. Yeah,
(31:18):
because you don't have time to take a straw pole
to see what everybody on the elevator, thinks, And you're
not necessarily in charge of everybody, so you don't get
to decide if the door stays open. So the decision
is you can't decide doors are closing on their own exactly.
If it's a full elevator, then yeah, t s yeah.
And it depends on the amount of elevators. Like we
(31:40):
have four elevator banks in our office, and I feel like, yeah,
I feel like, you know, there's gonna be another one
coming very soon. Yeah, So it's not a big deal,
And I don't expect anyone to hold the elevator for me.
In fact, I will say, go, don't like, reach your
hand out and stop the elevators for me, which apparently
(32:03):
is very dangerous. Um, not necessarily reaching your hand out,
but jumping on an elevator with the doors closing. That's
when it's that's you don't want to do that. I
do that all the time. You're not. You do it,
but do it at your own peril at my point
zero zero zero zero zero zero one five risk. Yeah. Um,
here's something I didn't know, chuck. Um. There's you're supposed
(32:27):
to stand in a single file line, no matter how
many elevators there are that that I think that's true. Like,
if you work in the Empire State building, you're going
to get huge lines. But my most office buildings I
don't think have lines. Depending on the size of the
office building, they might have. Uh this type of elevator
(32:47):
call system where you go up to a little keypad
or something, the dispatch system. Yeah, you type in what
floor you're going to, and the computer tells you what
elevator to wait for. You can only take one elevator,
but the elevator is going straight to your floor and
it just waits until enough people to fill it up
come along, and then that sends you on your merry way.
(33:08):
If you don't have that and you do find a line,
supposedly you're supposed to stand in single line. Did not
know that, Well, it may not be true. Again, I
think if you have that many people in your building
to warrant a line, then yeah. But our I mean
ours is pretty big and there's never like a big
crowd of people. Um, but you bring up an important
point here as far as the stops go, and um,
(33:30):
there is a term called elevator ing, which I've never heard,
and that is the discipline of designing an elevator to
work efficiently basically, and one of the things that they
have to look for is uh probable stops and they
have actually calculated this. Um. A guy his last name
is Fortune, has a probable stop table and says that
(33:53):
if there are ten people in an elevator that serves
ten floors, uh, it is going to you're gonna make
six and a half stops on average. That half stuff
is tricky. Ye, ten people on thirty floors nine and
a half stops. Um, So it's just interesting to think about,
Like you can avoid all of that with either the
(34:13):
the dispatch system or uh, like the World Trade Center
had the sky lobby where you could take an express
up to like the thirty floor, get off there and
then get on the local and just go to whatever
before you want to. And then that same guy, um
Mr Fortune, who's an elevator consultant, one of the foremost
ones I gather from that Nick plown Garden article. He
(34:34):
also told plown Garden that there's um you have to
factor in what's called weight time, which basically in an
American office building, supposedly the interval, which is the total
length of time it takes for a single car to
go all the way up and all the way down,
divided by the number of cars. Then you have your
way time that should be no more than thirty seconds,
(34:57):
with the actual weight time being about si that are
eighteen seconds. So in an American office building, you should
not have to wait for longer than eighteen seconds for
an elevator. Yeah, and he's carried it one step further,
which is um you want your handling capacity of the building.
That is the amount of passengers the percentage of passengers
(35:19):
of the building's population that you carry in five minutes,
and he's just thirteen percent is a pretty good target. Yeah,
you want to hit that thirteen percent range. And in general,
in England people are over elevateord and in places like
India and China they are under elevator. Not enough elevators, yep.
But in England they're allows you with them and they're
just carrying one person at a time. Apparently people have
(35:41):
like two three elevators in their house. Uh, Chuck, I
have one for you. Regarding etiquette, Okay, if you are
in an elevator and a man and a woman are
are exiting the elevator at the same time. Uh, should
the man let the woman go first? And where are we?
You are at a guar concert um and it's just
(36:07):
the two of us. I am always one to say
ladies first, But I have seen Miss Manners says in
a corporate environment, you're you should treat everyone equal and
not do things like ladies first and hold the door
open for a lady. And I think the Manners mentor,
Merrily McKee, would like us to correct. She's not Miss
(36:28):
Manners know, is that someone else? Yeah, she's the Manner's mentor,
But she says, if you're in an office environment, people
are supposed to be equal, so you don't have to
let ladies go first. I say, I'm a Southern gentleman,
so I do that kind of thing. If it's a
crowded elevator, it's every person for themselves, like you should
just get off. If you're at the front, you know,
(36:49):
standing in front of the door, it just makes more sense.
It can easily get very clumsy and confusing and just
awkward if you're like, oh well, make it out of
the way, you go first. You know, that's not in
the lady who probably like, who's this create that wants
to get behind me exactly. Uh. And also, if you're
on a crowded elevator and you are in front of
the doors, the proper procedure is to step off and
(37:09):
let people out, um, instead of just trying to wedge
yourself into somebody's groin. You know, just like step off,
the same as if you're on a subway. You can
get right back on. Don't worry. But I see a
lot of people not doing that. I wonder why I don't.
I guess they're lazy jerks. You like, Yeah, you you
(37:29):
step off. If you're the closest of the door, you
step off and you leave your hand there, your arm
then get chopped off. Yeah basically yeah, I mean you're
but you're leaving it. You're keeping it from closing on
the people exiting, but you're also keeping closing from closing
on you. So you can get back on if you're
gonna lose your place, you know, you're a martyr. Yeah.
And then when you step back on, as per the
(37:50):
rules of social norms, according to these people who study it,
everyone just sort of files into the proper place. If
it's just two of you, you're probably should stand you know, well,
apart from each other. There's four of you, you're probably
gonna migrate to the corners, and then if it gets
super full, you're gonna be touching some folks. Yeah, but
(38:10):
normally up till five it follows the face of a die. Yeah, yeah,
that makes sense. Yeah, and you face forward and again
that's supposedly because there used to be benches in the
backs of elevators. It would be so weird if someone
just got on and just walk straight to the back
of the elevator and stood there. Yeah, like that would
(38:31):
freak me out. I would get off that elevator. What
if they just turned around or facing you? No, no, no no,
if they just got on and just walk straight and
just face the back wall, I'd be off of that
thing so fast because they got something up their sleeve
that I don't want to be a part of. But
what if they what if you were towards the back
of the elevator facing front, somebody got on and stayed
by the doors but just turned around it's facing you.
(38:54):
That's equally is creepy. And then there between you and
the door, because I wouldn't even know how to get
out of there safely, I'd probably bowl the dude over
and then he'd be like, what's your problem? You just
start crying? What about your phone? Oh? Well, I mean
this is a personal thing, I guess, but I think
you should never talk on the phone when you're several
(39:14):
feet from a stranger. Barely anybody gets coverage on an
elevator anyway. They just stand there on the phone the
whole time. They did we get cut off. Hello, hold on,
I'm on an elevator. You say, I'll call you back.
I'm on an elevator. Yeah. I wouldn't want to have
my conversations in front of people either. Sure, not that
they're super private, but that's just that's my biz. Sure,
(39:37):
do you got anything else? Uh? No, I do. Um.
If you've seen internet videos about did you see the
one on the the train in Asia where people were
just packing themselves on and like pushing people on like sardines.
Apparently in Asia there is a much much higher tolerance
for personal space when it comes to subways, elevators, and
(40:00):
getting around. Americans have many more hang ups. Well, we
have a huge nation that we've spread out through and
have enormous pockets of unpopulated areas. We like our land
and our fences, good fences make good neighbors. That's it.
I got nothing else. It's elevators pretty much. Seriously, go
(40:20):
read up and then down by Nick plown Gartner in
the New Yorker. It's awesome. Um, and uh, you know
I did have one more thing. Actually, what he makes
an awesome point in there that if it wasn't for elevators,
the world as we know it would not even be
the same because verticality is what has allowed us to
uh grow as people. Um, because if it wasn't for verticality,
(40:45):
we could only expand outward, and there's only so much
outward expansion you can do. So elevators themselves have shaped
the way mankind has has populated this world. Pretty interesting.
It is interesting. Never thought about it before that way.
It's an interesting article through and through, best by far
(41:07):
article ever written on elevators. But we have plenty of
articles on elevators on the site how Stuff Works. You
can type elevators into the search bar there and they'll
bring up a bunch of different articles. You can read those.
And uh, since I said search bar, it's time for
a listener mail. I'm gonna call this you guys may
have legitimately saved our son's life. Wow, right, Hey, guys,
(41:29):
want to say thank you and tell you that it's
quite possible that your show on allergies saved our son's life.
Yesterday and this just came in, so this was very recent. Henry,
our three year old, was playing outside and was stung
by b you near the wrist on his left arm.
I didn't think anything of it because he's been stung
before and not appeared to be allergic with no reaction.
So I made sure the stinger was out and handed
(41:50):
him over to my husband Uh to calm him down. Thankfully,
my husband, Dustin, remember the allergy podcast you did and
how you said sometimes it takes the first exposure for
the body to decide if it's response to a specific allergen.
So Dustin kept a close eye on Henry and noticed
that the left side of his face started to swell
within minutes I know. We rushed into the emergency clinic,
(42:13):
where he received a shot of epinephrin, the dose of anahistamine,
and prescriptions for both immunosuppressants and an EpiPen. He is
doing fine, back to his normal wild self, thanks to
the information, your podcast and Dustin's quick thinking. The first
thing Dustin said to me after leaving the clinic was
you realized stuff you should know saved his life. Right,
that's so cool. I know, thank you for everything you do. Guys.
(42:34):
We always love the podcast, and now I have even
more reason to appreciate it. That is from the Becks, Dustin,
Lindsay Silas, and Henry thanks Beck's permission to read it.
And she asked the husband and he was like, hey, yeah,
people need to get the word out on this stuff. Yeah,
what's your kid after they get stung by beats? Yeah,
don't just laugh at them. Yeah, I would say we
didn't necessarily save anyone's life. That would be more of
(42:58):
the parents, Oh of course, and the medical um emergency people. Yeah,
but we're glad that knowledge could kind of ease that
inch it along. Yeah. So, if we've done anything that
even remotely smacks of saving a life, we always love
hearing about that. Believe it or not, it's happen more
than once. Um. You can tweet to us at s
(43:19):
Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook
dot com slash stuff you should Know. You can send
us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works
dot com and as always, joined us at our home
on the Web. Stuff you Should Know dot com For
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is It
How Stuff Works dot com
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.