The Otis Elevator Company…claims that its products carry the equivalent of the world’s population every five days.
This astonishing fact was gleaned here and sparked yet another idea about lifts (or elevators, if you must).
Buildings are being built to heights where cables can’t be used to support cars which travel from bottom to top: you have to swap lifts.
This has implications for safety in the event of a fire. People may find that a fire is below them and their escape is blocked…even when trying to use the stairs.
Today’s invention is therefore an ejector lift. If an inferno is raging at a lower level in a tower, a number of special reserve cars would descend from near the roof level.
These would collect people and also have many trailing harnesses to which occupants could secure themselves to a lift.
These emergency lifts would move upwards in the shaft each inflating a helium balloon above as they went.
At roof level, the drive gear would swivel out of the way, allowing a train of cars as well as the externally-harnessed passengers to ascend safely into the sky.
Each car could then drop an anchor at a safe distance and be winched to the ground.
