A SELF-MOVING STAIRCASE

Too Long; Didn't Read

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!"