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An escalator is a conveyor transport device for transporting people, consisting of a staircase whose steps move up or down on tracks that keep the surfaces of the individual steps horizontal. A moving walkway, moving sidewalk, travelator, or travellator is a slow conveyor belt that transports people horizontally or on an incline in a similar manner to an escalator. In both cases, riders can walk or stand. The walkways are often supplied in pairs, one for each direction. Escalators Modern escalators have metal steps in a continuous loop that moves on tracks. Escalators are typically used in pairs with one going up and the other going down, however in some places, especially European stores and metro station, there are no escalators going down; the escalators only go up. Some modern escalators in stores and shopping malls have glass sides that reveal their workings. Although most escalators are straight, some shopping malls use curved versions. Most escalators have moving handrails that approximately keep pace with the movement of the steps. The direction of movement (up or down) can be permanently the same, or be controlled by personnel according to the time of day, or automatically be controlled by whomever arrives first, whether at the bottom or at the top (of course the system is programmed so that the direction is not reversed while somebody is on the escalator). In the last two cases there has to be an alternative nearby. Moving walkways
High-speed walkways
Inclined moving sidewalks
Spiral escalators Spiral escalators take up much less horizontal space than straight escalators. However, early spiral designs were failures. For example, one spiral escalator constructed by Reno in conjunction with William Henry Aston at London's Holloway Road Underground station in 1906 * was dismantled almost immediately and little of the mechanism survives. The Mitsubishi Electric Corporation has developed successful commercial designs and has manufactured curved and spiral escalators since the 1980s. Notable sets of spiral escalators are located in the San Francisco Shopping Centre in San Francisco, California, and at Forum Shops at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Times Square shopping mall in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, also features four curved escalators, as does Wheelock Place in Singapore. History In 1892, Charles A. Wheeler patented ideas for the first practical moving staircase, though it was never built. Some of its features were incorporated in the prototype built by the Otis Elevator Company in 1899. Jesse W. Reno, an 1883 engineering graduate of Lehigh University, invented the first escalator and installed it as an amusement ride at Coney Island, New York in 1897. This particular device was little more than an inclined belt with wooden slats or cleats on the surface for traction. The incline was as steep as 25°. Reno sold this machine to 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. Some escalators of this vintage were still being used in the Boston subway until 1994. Around the same time that Reno's invention appeared, Charles Seeberger developed a form of escalator as well. This device actually consisted of flat, moving stairs, not unlike the escalators of today, except for one important detail: the step surface was smooth, with no comb effect to safely guide the rider's feet off at the ends. Instead, the passenger had to step off sideways. To facilitate this, at the top or bottom of the escalator the steps continued moving horizontally beyond the end of the handrail (like a mini-moving sidewalk) until they disappeared under a triangular "divider" which guided the passenger to either side. The first escalator installed on the London Underground was one such Seeberger model; it was located at Earls Court, London, UK. For a time, Otis Elevator sold both types of escalator. The company later combined the best aspects of both the Reno (guiding slats) and Seeberger (flat steps) inventions and in 1921 produced an escalator of the type used today. These improvements in design brought the escalator into extensive use in department stores, banks and metro stations. The German company Orenstein & Koppel (O&K) would also become a major player in escalator design and manufacture. The older lines of the London Underground had many escalators with wooden steps until they were rapidly replaced following the fire at King's Cross St. Pancras tube station in 1987. Old escalators with wooden steps are still in use in some places, however, such as the Tyne Cyclist and Pedestrian Tunnel in Tyne and Wear, England, the Macy's department store in New York City and the St. Anna Pedestrian Tunnel underneath the Schelde in Antwerp, Belgium. Usage When using escalators, it is customary for passengers who wish to stand and let themselves be carried up or down to stand on one side to allow other users to walk past them. The observance of this custom varies greatly from place to place—the rule is more likely to be adhered to, for example, on the long escalators of an underground transport system rather than in a department store. Additionally, it is customary to stand on a fixed side, so that walking people do not have to zigzag. The proper side for standing also varies, and does not necessarily correspond with the rules of the road: in London, Washington, D.C., Boston, Hong Kong and Moscow riders stand on the right; in Singapore and Australia, on the left. The side for standing can also vary within a country; in Japan, riders stand on the left in Tokyo but on the right in Osaka. On the Montreal Metro, while walking on escalators is theoretically forbidden, this rule is scarcely observed and not at all enforced, and passengers tend to stand on the right. In some countries, such as Ireland, there is no convention and people stand on either side randomly as they please. A mnemonic for the U.S./British convention on this point is that stand and right each have five letters, while walk and left have four. Sometimes escalators help in controlling traffic flow of people. For example, an escalator to an exit effectively discourages most people from using it as an entrance, and therefore does not require a regular ticket check. As with turnstile jumping, this can be physically defeated by someone able-bodied and determined to do so, but at the price of making themselves conspicuous. Similarly, escalators often are used as the exit of an airport secure area. Such an exit would generally be manned to prevent its use as an entrance. For fun, people sometimes use an escalator running in the opposite direction, climbing up or down the stairs faster than it moves. This is forbidden in some cities, notably Paris, where running in the opposite direction can lead to being fined. Usage in Advertising Escalators have recently been used by various media agencies in advertising campaigns with the handrails, side panels, or steps used for advertising. Escasite is one example of an advertising company that specializes in this. Accidents There have been various reports of people actually falling off a moving escalator or getting their shoe stuck in part of the escalator. A few fatal accidents are known to have involved escalators and travelators: Safety features To reduce accidents, newer models of escalators are equipped with one or more of the following safety devices: Safety tips While some escalator accidents are caused by a mechanical failure, most can be avoided by following some simple safety precautions. Longest escalators and systems In Hong Kong, tens of thousands of commuters travel each work day between Central, the central business district, and 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 800 m. It goes only one way at a time; the direction reverses depending on rush hour traffic direction. The Ocean Park in Hong Kong also has a long escalator system connecting two parts of the Park, with an overall length of 224 m (745ft). In the Times Square shopping centre in Causeway Bay there is a bank of four spiral escalators, each of which turns through about 180 degrees — by necessity, the undersides of these escalators are thicker as the step return mechanism needs to be more complex than on a straight escalator. The longest single span uninterrupted escalator in the Western Hemisphere is at the Wheaton station of the Washington Metro subway system. It is 70 m (230ft) long, and takes almost 2 minutes and 45 seconds to ascend or descend without walking. Four of the five longest escalators in the Western Hemisphere are in the Washington Metro system (the fifth is at Porter Square station in Boston) including what was formerly the longest escalator in the Western Hemisphere, located at the Bethesda station (213ft 10in), and also those at Woodley Park-Zoo/Adams Morgan (204ft) and Medical Center (202ft 6in). The metro systems in several cities in Eastern Europe (including St. Petersburg, Kiev and Prague) have Soviet-era escalators up to approximately 100 m (330ft) long. Those at the Náměstí Míru station in Prague were rebuilt to the same length in 1998–9 by ThyssenKrupp. The longest in the famously deep Moscow Metro is the Park Pobedy station. Opened in 2003, these escalators are 126 m long and take nearly three minutes to transit, making them the longest single-section escalators in Europe. The longest escalator on the London Underground system is at Angel station with a length of 60m, and a vertical rise of 27.5m. The longest freestanding escalator in the world is inside a huge atrium at CNN Center in Atlanta, Georgia. It rises 8 stories and is 205 ft (62 m) long. Originally built as the entrance to a Krofft-themed indoor amusement park that opened and closed in 1976, the escalator is now used for CNN studio tours. Science Fiction The concept of a megalopolis based on high-speed walkways is common in science fiction. The first work set in such a location is When The Sleeper Wakes (1899) written by H. G. Wells (also republished as The Sleeper Awakes), and takes place in London around the year 2100. Later The Roads Must Roll (1940), written by Robert A. Heinlein, depicts the risk of a transportation strike in a society based on similar speed sidewalks. The novel is part of the Future History saga, and takes place in 1976. Isaac Asimov, in the novel The Caves of Steel (1954) and its sequels, uses similar enormous underground megalopolies with a similar sidewalk system as a background for the early adventure of Elijah Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw, first heroes of The Foundation Series. The period described is about the year 3000. The supposed transportation system is a massive network of parallel moving belts, the inner ones quicker. Screen and windblowers protect the passenger, chairs and even mall centre are realized on the belt. In the Heinlein work the fast lane run at 180 km/h, and the first "mechanical road" was built in 1960 between Cincinnati and Cleveland. The relative speed of two adjacent belts is up to 20km/h (in the book the fast lane stops, and the second lane run at 160km/h), far too much for a realistic system. In the Wells and Asimov works there are more steps in the speed scale and the speeds are less extreme. Etymology Escalator was originally a combination of the word 'scala', which is Latin for steps, and the word 'elevator', which had already been invented. The verb form of the word is (to) escalate and is commonly applied to the use of increased force in warfare. The word Escalator started out as a trademark of the Otis Elevator Company. Otis, however, failed to police its usage sufficiently, so escalator became a generic term in 1950. But until then, other manufacturers had to market their escalators under different names. The Peelle Company called theirs a Motorstair, and Westinghouse called their model an Electric Stairway. The Haughton Elevator company (now part of Schindler Group) referred to their product as simply Moving Stairs. See also | |||||||||||||
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