ESCALATORS

DEFINITION• An escalator is a conveyor type transport device that moves people. It is a moving staircase with steps that move up or down using a conveyor belt and tracks keeping each step horizontal for the passenger.

HISTORY

• In 1892, Charles A. Wheeler patented ideas for the first practical moving staircase, though it was never built.

• Jesse W. Reno invented the first escalator and installed it as an amusement ride at Coney Island, New York in 1897.

• Charles Seeberger further developed it and joined the Otis Elevator Company in 1899, and together they produced the first commercial escalator which won a first prize at the Paris 1900 Exposition Universelle in France.

HOW ESCALATORS WORK

• The core of an escalator is a pair of chains, looped around two pairs of gears. An electric motor turns the drive gears at the top, which rotate the chain loops. A typical escalator uses a 100 horsepower motor to rotate the gears. The motor and chain system are housed inside the truss, a metal structure extending between two floors.

HOW ESCALATORS WORK (CONT.)

• Instead of moving a flat surface, as in a conveyer belt, the chain loops move a series of steps. As the chains move, the steps always stay level. At the top and bottom of the escalator, the steps collapse on each other, creating a flat platform. This makes it easier to get on and off the escalator. In the diagram below, you can see how the escalator does all of this.

HOW ESCALATORS WORK (CONT)

• Each step in the escalator has two sets of wheels, which roll along two separate tracks. The upper set (the wheels near the top of the step) are connected to the rotating chains, and so are pulled by the drive gear at the top of the escalator. The other set of wheels simply glides along its track, following behind the first set.

HOW ESCALATORS WORK

SPEED• Escalator speeds vary

from about 90 feet per minute to 180 feet per minute (27 to 55 meters per minute). An escalator moving 145 feet (44 m) per minute can carry more than 10,000 people an hour -- many more people than a standard elevator.

TRIVIAS

• Escalator = Scala +Elevator 

the name 'escalator' came from the word 'scala', which is Latin for steps and the word 'elevator', which had already been invented.

TRIVIAS

• on the London Underground and the Washington Metro, and in Hong Kong, one stands on the right; in Australia on the left. In the Montreal Metro, there is no rule, as passengers are supposed not to walk on the escalators,

TRIVIAS

• the Mid-levels, a residential district hundreds of feet uphill, using a long distance system of escalators and moving sidewalks called the Central-Mid-Levels escalator. It is the world's longest outdoor escalator system (not a single escalator span), at a total length of 800m. It goes only one way at a time; the direction reverses depending on rush hour traffic direction.

TRIVIAS• The longest escalator in the Western

Hemisphere is at the Wheaton station of the Washington Metro subway system. It is 508ft (155m) long.

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