We live on the top floor and there's no elevator

The landlord calls it the view. I call it six flights with a sack of flour. — Tenant, 1853

Hoists had been around a while. The trouble was the rope. When it broke, the platform fell, along with whoever was standing on it, so sensible people took the stairs. Elisha Otis added a spring that jammed iron catches into the rails the second the rope went slack. Then, at a New York fair in 1854, he rode the platform up himself and had the rope cut. It dropped an inch or two and held. That's how you sell a safety brake.

What it broke: the top floor used to be the cheap one. Now it's the penthouse.

The full file

The first passenger elevator with his brake went into a store, the E.V. Haughwout & Co. building on Broadway in New York, on March 23, 1857. It ran on a steam engine.

Shoppers weren't impressed. It was noisy and jerky, and by 1860 it had been shut down.

Otis never saw it catch on. He died in Yonkers on April 8, 1861, seven years after he had the rope cut, and his sons Charles and Norton took over the business that became the Otis Elevator Company. Some men only get to see the beginning.