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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsRide This Bizarre, Old-School Elevator Before They All Shut Down
Source: Smithsonian
Every department store in Germany used to have a paternoster, says Patrick Carr of the Elevator History Museum. But that was the late 1960s, and now the idea of a passenger standing by an open elevator shaft and hopping into a box at exactly the right moment sounds risky. Today, these oddly-designed lifts are fading from European cities, and soon travelers might not have a chance to ride them any longer. But what exactly is this scary-sounding contraption?
The paternoster, pictured above, consists of two elevator shafts side-by-side, with no doors. Within them, a chain of compartmentsalso without doorsmoves continuously on an endless belt, like a weirdly efficient Ferris wheel. In one open shaft the compartments go up, and in the other they come back down. If a person stays in their small cabinet after the last floor of a building, they may fear certain death, or think theyll be turned upside down, but the box theyre standing in just keeps going up or down and around again, like a Ferris wheel, plunging them briefly into darkness until they again reach an open floor.
This odd elevator was once somewhat common. It was invented in the 1860s by Peter Ellis, an architect from Liverpool. Carr has documented well over a hundred paternosters, mostly in Germany, some of which still exist and some of which have likely closed. As of 2006, there were about 70 paternosters in the Czech Republic, according to a Radio Praha segment from that year. A paternoster enthusiast named David Kabele told Radio Praha that many paternosters in England and elsewhere were shut down in the second half of the 20th century because of their perceived danger, but that in Prague they remained, because the Communist government wasnt very afraid of European standards and norms. It wasnt until the 1990s, Kabele says, that some Czech buildings took their contraptions out of operation. Today, a directive in Europe forbids the construction of new paternosters.
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/ride-bizarre-old-school-elevator-they-all-shut-down-180955461/
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Ride This Bizarre, Old-School Elevator Before They All Shut Down (Original Post)
demmiblue
Jun 2015
OP
I rode one in the IG Farben Building once a month (well twice, once up, then down)
Brother Buzz
Jun 2015
#2
Codeine
(25,586 posts)1. Fascinating!
I'd love to ride one of those. Thanks for posting this!
Brother Buzz
(36,444 posts)2. I rode one in the IG Farben Building once a month (well twice, once up, then down)