Otis: Giving Rise to the Modern City (review)

Otis: Giving Rise to the Modern City. By Jason Goodwin. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001. Pp. xv+286. $27.95.

There are few industries in which one firm's name is so synonymous with a product as is the Otis name. Though the famed elevator (and escalator) builder never in its 150-year history was without competition—occasionally fierce—it has remained the world leader in its field. Odd, then, that Jason Goodwin's book is the first full-length company history.

Otis opens with the well-known story of the firm's emergence onto the stage of American industry, at the New York Crystal Palace in 1854. Elisha Graves Otis had himself hoisted up on one of his freight platforms. He then cut the rope. Rather than crashing to the bottom of the open hoistway, the platform was arrested in place and Otis cried out, "All safe, gentlemen, all safe!" What distinguished Otis's lifts was his "broken-rope safety," which overcame the potential for disaster when a hoisting rope parted and led to the widespread use of elevators, at first mainly for handling goods in factories, stores, and warehouses.

Otis was restless and driven, and, though not a particularly good businessman, he managed to establish a modest factory in Yonkers, New York. Based on the fame of the safety, a reputation for quality work, and the steadying presence of sons Charles and Norton, the firm slowly grew and by the late 1850s was building passenger elevators for some of New York City's hotels and department stores. Ironically, the firm was given a major boost when Elisha died at the beginning of the Civil War, allowing Charles free rein to improve the efficiency of the manufacturing processes and commercial structure. Growth after that was steady, following in lock step the burgeoning of cities and tall buildings and the consequent need for vertical transportation. Otis today employs 66,000 people in 1,900 cities in 222 countries.

Goodwin notes that the idea for his book was "invented" ten years ago by the company's then-president and "was guided by a committee of historians and experts from the world of publishing," as well as by two former Otis executives (p. x). This is the sole mention of that committee, and we are left to wonder just what role it actually played. It is equally interesting that the copyright is held neither by author nor publisher but by United Technologies—Otis's present parent firm—which might suggest that we have here a puff piece. But, while Otis never could be mistaken for one of Harvard's classic 1950s histories of machinery builders, the mention of a goodly number of warts leaves the impression is that this is a reasonably fair picture of the enterprise.

The passenger elevator soon became the firm's mainstay. Sometimes, though not always, Otis led the field. Its first major advance after the safety was a steam hoisting machine combining engine, winding drum, and brake. Because the attendant plant was expensive and complicated, however, the steam elevator was rapidly supplanted by the hydraulic after the early 1870s—and here was a case of Otis being in the rear of the van. Other builders, mainly in rapidly expanding post-fire Chicago, led. Otis entered the hydraulic field by a means that it developed into a fine art: purchasing patents and buying out other firms. This strategy, in concert with Otis's own R&D efforts, maintained its commercial status—a critical matter, for only the hydraulic elevator was capable of the speed and capacity demanded by the skyscraper.

Otis's position of world leadership was firmly fixed in 1902 when again it assumed a pioneering role, in the adoption of electric drive. This had appeared in the 1880s and improved slowly through the 1890s, but only for light duty, usually with worm gearing, and was not remotely competitive with the hydraulic system. Arguably most significant in...