What common mall feature was once an amusement park ride?
Sunday, November 5, 2023
Make every day more interesting. Each day a surprising fact opens a world of fascinating information for you to explore. Did you know that….? 
| | Original photo by PV productions/ Shutterstock |
| The first working escalator was an amusement park ride. | Over the course of two weeks in the fall of 1896, some 75,000 people stepped onto the curious contraption stationed at Coney Island's Old Iron Pier. Initially created by engineer Jesse Reno for use in the New York City subway system, the "inclined elevator" carried people on a conveyor belt-type platform, at an angle of 25 degrees, to a height of 6 or 7 feet from the ground. Although it lacked individual steps, the inclined elevator featured accompanying handrails and shallow platform grooves that allowed it to pass seamlessly through a pronged top landing, making it the first working escalator.
Reno wasn't the first to muse on a means for automatically moving people to higher floors. In 1859, lawyer and inventor Nathan Ames obtained a patent for his "Revolving Stairs," which he proposed could be made from wood or metal, and powered by steam, weights, or hand. In other words, it was more of a fanciful concept than an invention with a clear path to becoming a reality, and the idea was left to gather dust. Thirty years later, amateur engineer Leamon Souder followed suit with a patent for his "Stairway," a series of steps pushed at an incline along an "endless propelling-belt." While more practical than Ames' creation, Souder's Stairway was also never built, leaving Reno to claim the glory after patenting his version in 1892.
While Reno's business lifted off with the installation of four of his inclined elevators in New York City's Siegel Cooper Department Store in 1896, he soon faced stiff competition from inventor Charles Seeberger. Having purchased a patent from explorer George Wheeler, Seeberger coined the term "escalator" and teamed with the Otis Elevator Company to develop a new and improved model. Similar to today's versions with steps that emerged from the bottom and flattened at the top landing, the prototype wowed onlookers at the 1900 Paris Exposition. By 1920, Otis had absorbed both Seeberger's and Reno's patents and installed 350 escalators around the world, the moving stairway now well past the point of spectacle and clearly established as a mode of casual transportation for modern city-dwellers.
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 | | There are only two sets of escalators in the entire state of Wyoming. | | |
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| There are only two sets of escalators in the entire state of Wyoming. |  |  |
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| The sides of an escalator are called __. |  |
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 | Numbers Don't Lie |
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 | | Patent number of Jesse Reno's inclined elevator | | 470,918 |
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| | | Height (in centimeters) of the world's shortest escalator | | 83.4 |
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| | Typical inclination (in degrees) of a modern escalator | | 30 |
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| | | Annual escalator passengers in the U.S. | | 105 billion |
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 | The Norwegian city of Trondheim features the world's only bicycle escalator. |
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| Why bother pedaling a bike up a hill when you can have a machine do the hard work for you? That was the mindset of Norwegian industrial designer Jarle Wanvik, who set about creating an easier way up the 18-degree incline of Trondheim's Brubakken Hill. Introduced in 1993 as the world's first bicycle escalator, the Trampe provides a series of footplates that run along a track at the push of a button. With one foot pressed against a plate and the rest of the body on the bike as normal, users are propelled up the 400-plus-foot path at a rate of approximately 5 miles an hour. The Trampe carries 20,000 to 30,000 cyclists per year, according to Trondheim's tourism site, and it reportedly has a strong safety record. However, perhaps because of high costs of installation — between $2,400 and $3,200 a yard as of 2014 — Brubakken Hill remains the lone place on this planet where bikers can enjoy the reward of quality views without the sweat usually needed to reach such heights (and without getting off their bikes — other "bike escalators" will carry a bike separately up a hill for you). | | |
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posted by June Lesley at 5:14 AM
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