4 May: Escalators

On this date in 1935, the world's longest escalator (at that time) opened at Leicester Square Underground station in London. Here are some things you might not know about moving staircases:

1. At least, it was the world's longest at 54m (177 ft) when it was built, but it isn't any more. The world's longest escalator now is at the Moscow Metro station at Park Pobedy which is 413 feet long. It isn't even the longest on the London Underground system any more. Since 1992, that title has belonged to the 200 feet (61m) system at Angel Station.
2. The world's longest outdoor escalator system is the Central-Mid-Levels escalator in Hong Kong, which spans 2,600 feet. It changes direction according to the direction of rush hour traffic. The shortest escalator in the world is in the Okadaya Mores shopping mall in Kawasaki, Japan. Its vertical rise is 32.8 inches (83 cm) and it has just five steps.
3. The first people to use the principle on which escalators are based were the builders of the Great Pyramid in Egypt. Blocks of stone were moved by rolling them up specially built ramps next to the pyramid, on a series of tree trunks.
4. It wasn't until the nineteenth century, though, that escalators as we know them began to appear. Nathan Ames, from Saugus, Massachusetts, is credited with patenting the first "escalator" in 1859, intended for elderly and disabled people to use in their own homes, but he never got as far as building it. The first person to build one, was Jesse Reno, also from Massachusetts, who built a steam powered escalator in 1895.
5. The first escalator in the UK was installed in Harrods in 1898, a 224 piece leather belt which moved upwards but didn't have steps as such. Victorian shoppers apparently found travelling on it pretty frightening - so much so that employees were stationed at the top to give out free Cognac and smelling salts to traumatised users. There's a famous story that when the first escalators were installed on the London Underground, they paid a man with a wooden leg, known as Bumper Harris, to ride the escalator all day long to show people that it was perfectly safe. There is some doubt whether this is actually true, but there is, nevertheless a model of Bumper Harris at the London Transport Museum’s Acton Depot.
6. There is written evidence, though, of the mishaps which occurred during the first week of operation. Nine dresses were torn, a finger pinched, and a lame passenger fell from his crutches. Which brings us to health and safety. Between 1994 and 1998 there were 7,000 escalator related injuries reported in the US, and 27 escalator related deaths. About three quarters of injuries on escalators are caused by falls; most of the rest are due to clothing, footwear or even body parts getting stuck in the mechanism. Probably the worst escalator related disaster was the 1987 fire at King's Cross Station in London, which killed 31 people and injured 100. The fire was caused by a build up of fluff, lubricants and wood veneers which ignited, smoldered for a while and then exploded into the ticket hall. Lessons were learned - wooden escalators were replaced with metal ones, and smoking was banned on the below ground sections of the Underground.
7. The risks aside, escalators have numerous advantages over lifts, or elevators. They can move more people over the same time; people don't have to wait for it to arrive (although there can be queues at busy times); they can be installed anywhere where a flight of stairs could go; and if they stop working, they can still be used as a normal staircase.
8. In many places there is an unwritten rule of etiquette regarding on which side of the escalator people stand, in order to let people who are in a hurry walk up unimpeded on the other. In Germany, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, riders are expected to stand on the right and walk on the left. In Australia and New Zealand, the opposite is the case. In Japan, it depends which city you're in. in Osaka, riders stand on the right, whereas in Tokyo they stand on the left. However, standing on one side and walking on the other can cause uneven wear on escalator mechanisms, so in some places people are told to stand wherever they want, to even things up, or are told not to walk at all.
9. The word "escalator" was originally a trademark coined by Charles Seeberger for the Otis Elevator Company. He took the word from Latin, using 'Scala'; as a prefix, 'E' and as a suffix, 'Tor,' which translated as "means of traversing from." This meant other companies making moving staircases had to think of different names, such as Motor Stairs, Moving Stairs and Electric Stairway.
10. Escalators typically rise at an angle of around 30 degrees from the ground, and move at 0.3–0.6 metres (1–2 ft) per second.

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