Without it there would be no such thing as a city skyline, or even a city as we know it. Yet Elisha Graves Otis invented the safe elevator almost by accident. He wanted simply to build a machine that would hoist a bedding factory's equipment safely. He built it, all right—and also made possible the construction of the skyscraper and laid the technical foundation for dynamic urban centers around the world. Jason Goodwin's account of the product and the business that Otis created is an American story of continuous growth and reinvention that continues even today and at an ever-faster pace. Founded in 1853 in a ramshackle foundry on the Hudson River in Yonkers, New York, the company survived wars and depressions and transformed itself from a gritty manufacturer into an inventive engineering power and, ultimately, a sophisticated international business. Mr. Goodwin documents its rise with a buoyant mix of enlightened scholarship and charming anecdote, highlighting Otis's essential technological contribution to the development of the modern city. With 48 pages of rare black-and-white photographs and illustrations.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
The skyscraper, that most durable symbol of modernity, would not have been possible without the elevator, and the elevator as we have come to know it is largely the product of the company that Elisha Otis founded in the 1850s. The history of that company is detailed in New York Times journalist Goodwin's (On Foot to the Golden Horn) well-paced book, which weaves business, technological and social history into a seamless and entertaining narrative. Though various sorts of elevators had been in use for many years, it was Elisha Otis's invention of an automatic safety device in the years before the Civil War that made them practical and dependable. Under the more business-savvy leadership of Elisha's son, Charles, the company was able to capitalize on the go-go postwar economy to become dominant in the field, with an unmatched reputation for safety and craftsmanship. Readers of today's business pages will no doubt find much familiar in Goodwin's racy account of the fiercely competitive, volatile and technology-driven economy of the late 19th century, with its dizzying cycles of boom and bust. But the orgy of upward building that took place in the cities of America not to mention the Eiffel Tower meant that installing and maintaining elevators was never a business that was down for long. Familiar, too, is the attention that Otis's sometimes not entirely savory methods of preserving dominance in its field attracted from turn of the century trustbusters. Goodwin does not cover up some practices that, endemic at the time, were hardly proud moments. But besides being the history of one company, Goodwin's book (which includes 48 pages of b&w illustrations) is also a thumbnail history of American business, with its mistakes, sins and undeniable triumphs. (Sept.)Forecast: With the success of Colson Whitehead's elevator novel The Intuitionist, there should be a set of curious readers waiting for a book like this. But if fans of urban history also find the book, strong word-of-mouth sales should be a lock.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Review
A well-paced book, which weaves business, technological and social history into a seamless and entertaining narrative. (Publishers Weekly )
Thoroughly intelligent. (Daniel Akst Wall Street Journal )
Thoroughly intelligent. (Daniel Akst Wall Street Journal )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Better than I expected,
By Nonfiction Steve (Marquette, MI USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Otis: Giving Rise to the Modern City (Hardcover)
I've worked for Otis for nearly 30 years. I thought I knew how the company started and grew, but I was wrong. This book, produced by United Technologies, Otis' parent corporation, could have just been a promotional piece, but to the credit of the author I found it to be a well researched, well written chronical of Otis' humble New York beginnings in 1853 through today's global presence.It is a book written for people who are interested in the growth of the world's greatest cities and a company that was instrumental for that growth. The biggest surprise was the book's readability. Goodwin helped me understand the personalities and motivations of the people who brought Otis to where it is today. He painted pictures of the situations surrounding the events which helped me understand the logic behind Otis' progress. I felt he dealt honestly with United Technologies' takeover of Otis in 1976 (which I experienced) and brought the influences of Otis' global operations into perspective. It is an eye opener for internal Otis associates, and an educational experience for non-Otis readers who want to learn how a company can start from nothing and influence the way we all live. It is a book about machines, business, cities, and time. I highly recommend it.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not quite as 'elevating' as I expected,
By Vic Ridgley (Reno, NV) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Otis: Giving Rise to the Modern City (Hardcover)
I enthusiastically added "Otis" to my Wish List when it was released, largely on the strength of a positive review in the WSJ, and recently acquired a copy after a decent, two-year wait. The companion editorial and positive customer reviews on this page amply show how and where the book is strongest, in detailing the corporate-history activities that promoted Otis to prominence and dominance in the elevator industry.BUT, what I found hugely missing from the book was a systematic, engineering-oriented account of elevator technologies, in the form of line drawings, photographs or diagrams. The 48 pp of B&W material alluded to in the reviews cover mostly on-site head shots, more appropriate for an in-house corporate publication. The text makes numerous references to particular elevator technologies, favoring them with a cursory verbal description, but no real sense of what an installation looked like. The only verbal description that does justice to any conceptual design is Goodwin's description of Otis' early "stunt" elevator, where a rope pulled upward on a flat, flexible steel bar mounted flat on the cage roof, and wider than the cage, so that when pulled, the bar bent upward in the middle and retracted from the side rails, allowing the car free travel, but when the rope was cut, the steel bar flattened out and its projecting ends stuck in the side rails to arrest the fall. So, if you want to learn something about the mechanics of elevators, look elsewhere; perhaps in a classic compendium of old Scientific American issues and articles from the 19th century entitled, "Free Enterprise Forever." In short, the book is competently researched and written, but not very interesting. A better bet is The Mechanical Turk, by Tom Standage, an intriguing, ilustrated account of a seemingly mechanical chess-playing wizard.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Up-Down..None of above....,
This review is from: Otis: Giving Rise to the Modern City (Hardcover)
"Elevators'..is modern sounding,compared to stevadore implication of British..'Lift'. Began in 1853 by mechanic Elisha Otis,(NY foundry), this corporate history was commissioned by parent co...United Technologies,which paid in advance for 'modest # of copies". Otis's automatic braking system took fear out of skyscrapers-, but implosions of WTC has put it back
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