Werner von Siemens invented the world’s first electric elevator.
Today, when we are in the elevator and we go through the floors of skyscrapers one after another in a fraction of a second; We can’t even imagine what the situation was like before the invention of the elevator. In the past, for a very long time, people had to climb the stairs to move in tall buildings. And these conditions indicated that until the end of the 19th century and before the invention of the elevator, it was impossible to imagine building tall buildings.
In fact, the elevator was a by-product that was created from the advancement of Siemens rail and railway system technologies. For the first time, at the Mannheim World Trade Fair, people saw a test tower with a height of 20 meters, where an elevator with a capacity of 4 people moved people at a speed of 1.8 meters per second. was doing And this was while none of them could see the driver or understand what and with what force was moving this box. This was the first time in the world that an electric motor had done such a thing. The power source was located under the platform and the elevator was moved by gear.
People showed great interest in using the elevator, and from September to mid-November alone, more than 8,000 people rode this new means of transportation and enjoyed the view of Mannheim.
It was the world’s first electric elevator built by Werner von Siemens. After he registered this invention in 1866, he paid more attention to this product and its technological development. There was a great desire to use this technology among people. Especially the hotel owners were very interested in providing this comfort and advanced technology to the passengers of their hotels.
Documents in the Siemens archives show that the next elevator was installed in a hotel in Munich, near Salzburg.
Shanghai Club (old Dongfeng Hotel) using the first Siemens elevator in China
In 1910, a triangular wooden elevator was designed and built by Siemens in this club, which was one of the most magnificent buildings of that time, so that the first elevator in China was built in a hundred-year-old building. With the outbreak of the Pacific War, World War II, and the Anti-Japanese War, the club, once the most luxurious residence in Shanghai, was renamed the Hilton International Hotel, while the elevator was still in perfect working order.