[TINFOIL HAT]Some elevators use secret-conspiracy codes against the other people with the door-close buttons. I worked in an eight-storey office building and discovered the two elevators would slide non-stop from the top to the basement (but not going up ,when at the main floor) when the door-close button was pushed during the entire ride.
So in the intervening years, I’ve used variations of that — holding the main-floor button while holding the door-close button, then holding the door-open button, then the door-open button while holding the main-floor button. So far, the variations don’t work. But I have high hopes I’ll expose all the close-door elevator conspiracies before I die. Those buttons have to do something, after all.[/TINFOIL HAT]
That wasn’t a “secret-conspiracy code”; just a bug in the manufacturers’ software logic for the elevator control circuitry.
The code that decided which floors to stop at should have ignored the door-close signal when the elevator was in motion. But since it didn’t, the logic concluded that since the door-close button was pressed, we were done on this floor, and could go on to the next one. Even though it hadn’t actually stopped at that floor yet! Effectively, this bug allowed the door-close signal to override the floor selection signal. Not a desirable thing in the system design. But not too serious, because most people don’t hold down that button while the elevator is in motion. It was fixed in later versions of the software (mid 1990’s, I think) and ought to have been upgraded in any elevators still in service soon thereafter.
Most people would be surprised at how complex the logic is to run a modern elevator; and especially banks of evevators in a building.
Well, I checked on my way out yesterday and our elevator does have a stop button to Pull. Perhaps because we’re in a hospital and an attendant may need hands free to move a bed?? Next to it is a button that says Alarm; my research didn’t extend as far as pushing that.
And the doors are on a long delay so Close Door actually does do something.
