The escalator is patented by American inventor Jesse Wilford Reno - March 15th, 1892

On this day in 1892, Jesse Reno received a patent for what would later become the world's first working escalator.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class as a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that takes you on a ride through the
ups and downs of everyday history. I'm Gay Bluesier, and
in this episode, we're talking about the early days of escalators,

(00:20):
an invention that delivered all the fun and convenience of
stationary stairs, but without all that pesky exercise. The day
was March eighteen ninety two, Jesse Wilford Reno received a
patent for what would later become the world's first working escalator.

(00:45):
The inventor was born on August four, eighteen sixty one,
in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He moved east as an adult
and began studying engineering at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Reno's idea for the escalator was reportedly inspired by the
steep geography of the campus. The school is built on

(01:08):
the side of South Mountain, and as a result, the
students had to climb a lot of stairs to get around.
It's easy to imagine how this would inspire a student
with a mind for mechanics to dream up a way
for a machine to do all the heavy lifting. But
Reno actually wasn't the first person to design an escalator

(01:29):
like device. In eighteen fifty nine, a lawyer turned inventor
named Nathan Ames patented his design for a machine that
allowed people to quote, ascend, and descend from one story
of a building to another without exerting any muscular strength. Unfortunately,

(01:49):
Ames wasn't an engineer, so his design never made it
off the drawing board. A similar thing happened thirty years
later in eighteen eighty nine. That's when an amateur inventor
named Lehman Souder was granted a patent for the Stairway,
a moving staircase linked by a chain and propelled by hydraulics.

(02:12):
Once again, though Souder didn't have the engineering know how
to actually build the machine, but James Reno did. After
graduating with degrees in mining and mechanical engineering, he took
a job at the Edison Company, where he worked on
the electrical systems for railway projects. In eighteen ninety one,

(02:33):
at the age of thirty, Reno began drawing up plans
for what he would later refer to as the inclined elevator,
the endless conveyor, and the moving Stairs. Originally the design
was part of his proposal for an underground subway system
in New York City. Passengers would be transported from city

(02:55):
streets down to the subway tunnels on one escalator, and
then carried back up by another. Reno's proposal was rejected
by the city, but he didn't give up on the
idea of a moving staircase. On March fift Reno secured
a patent for his design. Unlike the escalators were used

(03:17):
to today, Reno's version featured a single vertical platform rather
than a series of steps, so think of it more
like an inclined treadmill. The platform traveled upwards along a
conveyor belt set at an incline of twenty five degrees.
It could be powered either by a generator or by
a directly connected electric motor. Safety features included a set

(03:41):
of rubber coated handrails that moved along with the conveyor belt,
as well as a pair of shallow landings and comb
like teeth at either end of the belt so that
clothes and feet couldn't get caught in the mechanism. Unlike
his predecessors, Reno was able to take the next step
and actually really build a prototype of his invention the

(04:02):
world's first functioning escalator four years later. In the machine
was ready for his big debut, but it wasn't installed
in a subway, or a department store, or any of
the places you'd expect to find an escalator today. Instead,
Reno set up his inclined elevator as an exhibition at

(04:25):
the Coney Island Amusement Park in New York City. For
the next two weeks, visitors got the thrill of a
lifetime as they rose seven feet in the air at
the relaxed pace of ninety ft per minute, about a
third of the average human walking speed. It may seem
somewhat tame today, but the quote unquote ride drew quite

(04:48):
a crowd. At Coney Island's Iron Pier. The machine could
transport about three thousand people per hour, and over the
course of its two week engagement, roughly seventy five thousand
people took that trip. A report in The Street Railway
review saying the praises of Reno's escalator, calling it quote

(05:12):
manifestly superior to vertical elevators because people are handled by
it continuously and without delay, and no attendant is required.
Several months later, the same prototype was moved to the
Manhattan side entrance of the Brooklyn Bridge. It opened to
the public on December twenty nine as part of a

(05:33):
one month trial meant to demonstrate the inventions practical use.
A magazine called The Electrical Age took notice of the display,
noting that the invention quote may prove, in the course
of time to be one of the most popular devices
used in office buildings or apartment houses. A more immediate
application was found in New York's multi story retail stores.

(06:00):
Reno's escalators had been installed in the Bloomingdale Brothers department
store at Third Avenue and fifty ninth Street. Following this success,
Reno moved to London and founded the Reno Electric Stairways
and Conveyors Company in the early nineteen hundreds. Around the
same time, improvements on Reno's design began to pop up

(06:21):
in patents around the world. The most notable was designed
by an explorer named George Wheeler. His patent featured actual
steps and was more in line with modern escalators. Wheeler
never built his machine, but he eventually sold the patent
to an entrepreneur named Charles sie Burger in nineteen hundred.

(06:43):
Sie Burger partnered with the Otis Elevator Company, and together
they built a working model for the Paris Exposition. Along
with its more efficient design, the Otis version of the
machine also had a much catchier name, the escalator, a
combination of elevator and scala, the Latin word for steps.

(07:04):
Over the next decade, Reno built and installed more than
twenty escalators in mass transit systems in both England and
the US. However, the company wasn't growing as fast as
Reno had hoped, and he was having a hard time
turning a profit. By nineteen eleven, his commercial prospects were
so bleak that he sold the whole operation, along with

(07:26):
his patent, to the Otis Elevator Company. Within a decade,
Otis had installed more than three hundred and fifty escalators worldwide,
primarily in department stores and subways. The company remained the
undisputed leader in both elevators and escalators for decades to come.
In fact, up until the mid twentieth century, Otis owned

(07:50):
the trademark for the term escalator, meaning that other manufacturers
were forced to come up with some clunky alternatives, like
the electric stairway and the motor stare that finally changed
in nineteen fifty when the U. S. Patent Office ruled
that the term escalator had become a catch all word

(08:10):
for any kind of moving staircase and was therefore no
longer able to be trademarked. Jesse Reno didn't come up
with the coolest name for his invention, and he was
far from the first person to dream of not having
to walk upstairs, but he was the first to make
that dream a reality and to prove to the world
that such a machine could serve a safe, practical purpose

(08:34):
in daily life. So on, behalf of lazy people around
the world. Jesse Reno, We salute you. I'm Gay Bluesier,
and hopefully you now know a little more about history
today than you did yesterday. If you enjoyed today's show,
consider following us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at t

(08:56):
d i HC Show. You can also rates or review
the show on Apple Podcasts, and you can write to
me directly at this day at I heart media dot com.
Thanks as always the Chandler Maze for producing the show,
and thank you for listening. I'll see you back here
again tomorrow for another day in History Class.