Electric Elevators
While electrifying the streetcars of Richmond, the increased passenger capacity and speed gave Sprague the notion that similar results could be achieved in vertical transportation: electric elevators. He saw that increasing the capacity of elevator shaft ways would not only save passengers' time, but would also increase the earnings of tall buildings, with height limited by the total floor space taken up in the shaft ways by slow hydraulic-powered elevators.
In 1892, Sprague founded the Sprague Electric Elevator Company, and with Charles R. Pratt developed the Sprague-Pratt Electric Elevator. The company developed floor control, automatic elevators, acceleration control of car safeties and a number of freight elevators. The Spague-Pratt elevator ran faster and with larger loads than hydraulic or steam elevators, and 584 elevators had been installed worldwide. Sprague then sold his company to the Otis Elevator Company in 1895.
Read more about this topic: Frank J. Sprague
Famous quotes containing the words electric and/or elevators:
“Suddenly I’m not half the girl
I used to be.
There’s a shadow hanging over me . . .
From me to you out of my electric devil....”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“The cigar-box which the European calls a “lift” needs but to be compared with our elevators to be appreciated. The lift stops to reflect between floors. That is all right in a hearse, but not in elevators. The American elevator acts like the man’s patent purge—it works”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)