The Romance of Modern Mechanism by Archibald Williams is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. CHAPTER XXI
A SELF-MOVING STAIRCASE
At the American Exhibition, held in the Crystal Palace in 1902, there was shown a staircase which, on payment of a penny, transported any sufficiently daring person from the ground-floor to the gallery above. All that the experimenters had to do was to step boldly on, take hold of the balustrade, which moved at an equal pace with the stairs, and step off when the upper level was reached.
The "escalator" (Latin scalae = flight of stairs) hails from the United States, where it is proving a serious rival to the elevator. In principle, it is a continuously working lift, the slow travel of which is more than compensated by the fact that it is always available. The ordinary elevator is very useful in a large business or commercial house, where it saves the legs of people who, if they had to tramp up flight after flight of stairs, would probably not spend so much money as they would be ready to part with if their vertical travel from one floor to another was entirely free of effort. But the ordinary lift is, like a railway, intermittent. We all know what it means to stand at the grille and watch the cage slide downwards on its journey of, perhaps, four floors, when we want to go to a floor higher up. Rather than face the delay we use our legs.
Theoretically, therefore, a large emporium should contain at least two lifts. If the number be further increased, the would-be passenger will have a still better chance of getting off at once. Thus at the station of the Central London Railway we have to wait but a very few seconds before a grille is thrown back and an attendant invites us to "Hurry up there, please!"
Yet there is delay while the cage is being filled. The actual journey occupies but a small fraction of the time which elapses between the moment when the first passenger enters the lift at the one end of the trip and the moment when the last person leaves it at the other end. In a building where the lift stops every fifteen feet or so to take people on or put them off, the waste of time is still more accentuated.
The escalator is always ready. You step on and are transported one stage. A second staircase takes you on at once if you desire it. There is no delay. Furthermore, the room occupied by a single escalator is much less than that occupied by the number of lifts required to give anything like an equally efficient service.
In large American stores, then, it is coming into favour, and also on the Manhattan Elevated Railway of New York. When once the little nervousness accompanying the first use has worn off, it eclipses the lift. A writer in Cassier's Magazine says: "In one large retail store during the holiday season more than 6,000 persons per hour have been carried upon the escalator for five hours of the day, and the aggregate for an entire day is believed to be 50,000. In the same store on an ordinary day the passengers alighting at the second floor from the eight large lifts, which run from the basement to the fifth floor, were counted, likewise the number at the escalator. This latter was found to be 859 per cent. of the number delivered by the eight lifts. In another establishment, in a very busy hour, the number taken from the first floor by the escalator was four times the number taken from the first floor by the fourteen lifts, which were running at their maximum capacity. To the merchant this spells opportunity for business.
"The experience at the Twenty-third Street and Sixth Avenue station of the Manhattan Elevated Railway in New York, during a recent shut-down of the escalator, which has been in service for some time, is interesting as showing the attitude of the public, of which many millions have been carried by the installation during the several years of its operation. The daily traffic receipts of this station for a period beginning several weeks before the shut-down and extending as many after, for the years 1903 and 1902, and receipts of the adjacent stations for the same period were carefully plotted ... and the loss area during the period of shut-down was determined. The loss area was found to embrace 64,645 fares. It was, furthermore, daily a matter of observation that numbers of people, finding that the escalator was not running, refused to climb the stairs, and turned away from the station.
"In the case of a great store, the escalator may be constructed as one continuous machine, with landings at each floor, and so arranged that steps which carry passengers up may perform a like service in carrying others down; or separate machines may be installed in various locations affording the best opportunity for displaying merchandise to the customer who may be proceeding from the lower to the upper floor. In the case of a six-storey building so equipped with escalator service in both directions, or in all ten escalator flights, it is obvious that the facilities are equal to an impossible number of elevators; and as facility of access has a direct bearing upon opportunities for business, it may well be argued that the relative value, measured by rent, of the main and upper floors is greatly changed."
Each step in a staircase has two parts—the "tread" or horizontal board on which the foot is placed, and the vertical "riser" which acts both as a support to the tread above and also prevents the foot from slipping under the tread. In the escalator each tread is attached rigidly to its riser, and the two together form an independent unit.
For the convenience of passengers in stepping on or off at the upper and lower landings, the treads in these places are all in the same horizontal plane. As they approach the incline the risers gradually appear, and the treads separate vertically. At the top of the incline the process is gradually reversed, the risers disappearing until the treads once more form a horizontal belt.
The means of effecting this change is most ingenious. Each tread and its riser is carried on a couple of vertical triangular brackets, one at each side of the staircase. The base of the bracket is uppermost, to engage with the tread, and its apex has a hole through which passes a transverse bar, which in its central part forms a pin in the link-chain by which power is transmitted to the escalator. Naturally, the step would tip over. This is prevented by a yoke attached to each end of the bar, at right angles to it and parallel to the tread. The yoke has at each extremity a small wheel running on its own rail—there being two rails for each side of the staircase.
Since step, brackets, bar, and yoke are all rigidly joined together, the step is unable to leave the horizontal, but its relation to the steps above and below is determined by the arrangement of the rails on which the yoke wheels run. When these are in the same plane, all the yokes, and consequently the treads, will also be in the same plane. But at the incline, where the inner rail gradually sinks lower than its fellow, the front wheel of one tread is lower than the front wheel of the next, and the risers appear. It may be added that, owing to the double track at each side of the staircase, the back wheel of one tread does not interfere with the front wheel of that below; and that on the level they come abreast without jostling, as the yoke is bent.
The chain, of which the step-bars form pins, travels under the centre of the staircase. It is made up of links eighteen inches long, having, in addition to the bars, a number of steel cross-pins 112 inches in diameter, their axes three inches apart, so that the chain as a whole has a three-inch "pitch." The hubs of the links are bushed with bronze, and have a graphite "inlay," which makes them self-lubricating. Every joint is turned to within 11,000 inch of absolute accuracy.
The tracks are of steel and hardwood, insulated from the ironwork which supports them by sheets of rubber. The wheels are so constructed as to be practically noiseless, so that as a whole the escalator works very quietly.
"It has been observed," says the authority already quoted, "that beginners take pains to step upon a single tread, and that after a little experience no attention whatever is given to the footing, owing to the facility of adapting oneself to the situation. The upper landing is somewhat longer, thereby affording an interval for stepping off at either side of sufficient duration to meet the requirements of the aged and infirm. The sole function of the travelling landing is to provide a time interval to meet the requirements of the slowest-acting passenger, and not of the alert. The terminal of the exit landing, be it top or bottom (for the escalator operates equally well for either ascent or descent), is a barrier, called the shunt, of which the lower member travels horizontally in a plane oblique to the direction of movement of the steps, and at a speed proportionately greater, thereby imparting a right-angle resultant to the person or obstacle on the step which may come in contact with the shunt. By reason of this resultant motion, the person or obstacle is gently pushed off the end of the step upon the floor, without shock or injury in the slightest degree. The motion of the escalator is so smooth and constant that it does not interpose the least obstacle to the free movement of the passenger, who may walk in either direction or assume any attitude to the same degree as upon a stationary staircase."
At Cleveland, U.S.A., there has been erected a rolling roadway, consisting of an inclined endless belt and platform made of planks eight feet long, placed transversely across the roadway. The timbers are fastened together in trucks of two planks each, adjoining trucks being joined by heavy links to form a moving roadway, which runs on 4,000 small wheels. At each end the roadway, which is continuous, passes round enormous rollers. Its total length is 420 feet, and the rise 65 feet. Four electric motors placed at regular intervals along its length, and all controlled by one man at the head of the incline, drive it at three miles an hour. It can accommodate six wagons at a time.
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