Yet Improving

The elevator at the center of the Earth

Modern elevators will not fall unless they are extensively sabotaged. 

In 1857,  Elisha Otis, of the Otis Elevator Company introduced the Otis Elevator Brake, now a standard component of all elevators. He advertised it by getting in an elevator, riding it to the top, and then ordering that the cable supporting the elevator be cut.

When the elevator is held up by the tension in the cable above, that same tension holds the braking mechanism in a position where it doesn’t touch anything. But if the tension goes away, a spring is released which causes the prongs of the elevator break to thrust outward, locking into a row of teeth running down the side of the elevator shaft and making the elevator completely immobile until repaired.

You can be trapped in an elevator, but you cannot fall in an elevator.

This is actually really comforting thank you

Griffin McElroy on the subject of elevators in medevial fantasy:

so i’m riding the elevator up to my apartment when the emergency phone in the elevator starts ringing 

and i just stand there for a second because this thing is like thirty years old and has never rung or even been used from what i know

but eventually i answer it thinking maybe something’s wrong with the elevator?? it’s an emergency phone it’s probably an emergency??? i dunno

except i shit you not it’s a telemarketer 

a telemarketer that’s as confused as i am when i finally interrupt him mid-spiel to inform him he has the wrong number and then interrupt him again to explain further that “uh, no, seriously, this is an elevator phone. i’m standing in an elevator. talking to you. on the emergency phone. i really think you got the wrong number”

“oh,” says telemarketer guy.

“yeah,” i say.

there’s some mutually-confused silence.

“so, this is my stop,” i say. “i gotta go.”

“oh,” says telemarketer guy.

“good luck,” i add, because telemarketer guy seems like he’s having an existential crisis. and then i hang up on him, because he’s having an existential crisis and won’t actually end the call, and because again i’m talking on an elevator emergency phone and, you know, this is my stop, i gotta go.

i’m just a big fan of the tone in which the ending was told