On the farm, we had freight elevators in the barns for carrying loads of eggs down to the loading dock, to be trucked to the washing/grading/packing room, and I operated them a lot. Pull one rope to go up, pull another to go down.
When I was a kid, there was a department store that still had old-fashioned passenger elevators with real, live operators. It was a beautiful thing, the brass levers and knobs. The store also had the vacuum tube system for payment, so clerks never had to handle money (this was before credit cards were in common use.)
Jobs lost due to technology? If companies had real, live phone operators, instead of the enraging automated menus, unemployment would come way, way down. And older people, the hearing-impaired, and people whose English is not fluent would all be better served.
I’ve been in many "self working’ elevators that used buttons instead of a lever, but the principle was the same – you had to use “up” and “down” buttons to get the elevator to the right floor, and carefully adjust it to be level with the floor (you didn’t just push a button labeled “4” and arrive precisely at the fourth floor – there were no numbered buttons, just “up” and “down”.) One of these was in the next building over on the “campus” where I worked. It had been built in 1910, and I suspect the elevators were installed then, too.
Taomist – “paternoster” is literally from “Pater Noster”, the first two words of The Lord’s Prayer (“Out Father”, again, literally). The elevator-like thing was called that as a testament to the degree of security people felt while riding in/on it.
Saying their prayers in case they didn’t survive?
An elevator only for the physically fit. Even partially disabled folk, slow folks, or the inebriated would have difficulties.
My Grandfather had an appartment in Evenston, Illinois. (This was in the early 1950’s I was somewhere between 5 and 7.) The building had an Otis elevator, with a circular crank to point to Stop, Up, and Down, and Lock. There were three floors. I was strictly forbidden to operate the elevator while alone. However, I was not specifically forbidden to hang around the elevator and ask everyone who wanted to use it if I could run it for them.
In his autobiography Charlton Heston told about how, while in college, he worked as the elevator operator in a high class apartment building. He said it was a great night job, as he had plenty of time to study while waiting for residents.
That’s not very persiasive. If true, that seems an odd reason to name it “paternoster” – that’s not the predominant paryer from a rosary. If the structure reminded someone of a rosary, one would expect them to call the device a rosary, or its equivalent in some other language.
The Kansas state legislature has an old fashioned elevator with an operator. In 1976 they determined that it was of historic value and so mandated by law that it be kept in operating condition. It’s only a three story journey, though.
When I worked in Crystal City I had to park in a true dungeon of a garage. The passenger elevators were just crazy slow, but there was a special one just for the parking attendents. It was basically a band with handles attached that never stopped going 'round.
Unlike the paternoster, you wouldn’t be able to go over the top, you’d have to get off on the top floor and walk around to the down side, then grab another handle/foothold. Patrons were strictly forbidden to use it, but I was always running late so I did almost daily. I further discovered that if you were slender enough to fit throught he upper bracket (oh, for the days! LOL!) and agile enough to crouch and jump once your handhold had gone over the top, you could get off in the machine room on the Ground floor instead of taking the stairs for the last flight.
It was great fun, like a daily carnival ride on the way to work.
The United Airlines hangar in San Francisco had at one time (and might still have) an elevator that was basically a vertical conveyor belt, continually moving, with little platforms sticking out. Step on the platform and up you go. Even simpler than a paternoster.
Interesting! I didn’t know that’s what those were called. I’d only ever seen one in a movie (German, I think).
Wikipedia has an animated graphic showing how the compartments move. Looks like fun, but not very disabled-friendly.
The word “paternoster” of course is Latin for “Our Father”, yanno “Pater Noster, qui es in coelis”
Adding: Huh, the wikipedia page actually cites the movie I remembered seeing it in :).
Even though I made the joke, I kinda get it - the appeal is that the elevator requires a human operator. The rich love having a stable of servants to do things for them - it’s a power thing. Like paying someone to fan you with a palm frond rather than getting an electric fan.
When I was a kid a friend’s grandmother had a mansion overlooking the ocean, a couple of acres (in the middle of the city). Had an enormous three story foyer with one of those ‘Gone With the Wind’ majestic staircases and a brass (at the time I thought it was gold) egg-shaped elevator. There was a platform across the inside bottom to stand on but the whole thing was a frame - so shiny. It rose by a chain & you pushed a button on the inside to go up. It wasn’t in a shaft. Very cool, especially for kids.
For years I’d think, “if I ever win the lottery I’ll get a big house with an elevator like that”. My ultimate standard of wealthy.
I sincerely doubt that any Yuppies would be allowed to join a club of this description.
The appeal is partially the having an indoor gate-keeper. Obviously the doormen are able to keep the riff-raff out, but someone is also needed to protect the members from each others impulses to break the rules.
You’re correct, the members I must say 99.9% of them have been very nice to me.
It’s just the women seem to always want to get off on the floor with the men’s baths and talk to their husbands. I can’t let them, I have to take a message. But I have yet to have any men try to get off at the floor with the women’s baths. And even then they’re not being that mean, they just don’t understand why they can’t go, even though I told them before, and they know the rules.
I thought my biggest problem would be the cell phones. In the interview that came up, but everyone so far observes that rule. The club has real phone booths, made out of wood and they have the pay phone, but people go in to the phone booths to use their cell phones.
A friend of mine lived in a Kansas City Garment District building. It was owned by his uncle, the son of the clothing manufacturer, so it was “grandfathered” in and still had a manually operated freight elevator (up and down buttons only). The passenger elevator was semi-automatic in that it had floor buttons, but manual doors.
I worked a party for him once as the elevator operator, running folks up and down to his floor, punching the button, but mainly opening the heavy exterior doors at each floor and the interior metal mesh door (looked a bit like this).
