MARCH 23, 1857: Mr. Otis Has No Regrets

 American inventor Elisha Otis had planned to join the California gold rush to find his fortune. As it turned out, he found his fortune closer to home, in the ups and downs of the business world — literally. Otis had devised a “hoist machine,” a fairly simple affair that would prevent a rising platform from falling if the ropes that held it broke.

Otis opened his small business in Yonkers, New York, which barely sputtered along until he came up with a plan to have P. T. Barnum publicly demonstrate his device at America’s first world’s fair in New York City in 1854.  An open elevator platform was installed at the center of the Crystal Palace exposition hall upon which Otis hoisted himself to the ceiling by means of a rope.  There to the oohs and aahs of the crowd below, he produced a sword and cut the rope. The platform plummeted downward, but Otis’ safety brake engaged and brought the elevator to a dramatic stop. “All safe, gentlemen, all safe,” Otis declared triumphantly.

On March 23, 1857, he installed the first commercial elevator, in a department store in New York City, and the elevator industry was launched. Then came passenger elevators which in turn allowed buildings to rise higher and higher, from five or six stories max to a hundred or more.

The ten-story Home Insurance Company Building in Chicago, serviced by four passenger elevators, was followed in 1913 by the Woolworth Building with 26 elevators and the Empire State Building in 1931 with 58.  Automatic self-service elevators came to Dallas, Texas, in 1950. Twenty years later, elevators in Chicago’s John Hancock Center barreled between floors at 1,800 feet per minute. Before its destruction in 2001, New York’s 110-story World Trade Center operated 252 elevators and 71 escalators, all manufactured by Otis.

My Kingdom for a Bic

Pedro I a 14th century king of Castile was one of the first monarchs who could write, and he had very nice penmanship. That didn’t prevent him from being stuck with the moniker Pedro the Cruel for various transgressions, real and imagined. His greatest sin seems to have been his hatred for the monks, a hatred which was returned in kind. When Pedro died by the dagger of his illegitimate brother on March 23, 1369, his place in history was left to be determined by — Guess who?  His sworn enemies, the monks.  It seems they too could write. And they went right to work proving that their pens were mightier than his scepter. Good penmanship can only take one so far.

The Game Show That Wouldn’t Die

Beat the Clock made its CBS debut on March 23, 1950, hosted by Bud Collyer. It ran until 1961. It rose from the dead in 1969 as The New Beat the Clock, running until 1974. It reappeared in 1979 as The All-New Beat the Clock, and later as All-New All-Star Beat the Clock.

To win, contestants had to “solve problems” within a certain time limit which was counted down on a madly-ticking giant clock. If they succeeded, they “beat the clock”; if they didn’t, “the clock beat them.” And they died.