The History of the Escalator
Jesse Reno, Charles Seeberger
An escalator is a conveyor type transport device that moves people. It is a moving staircase with steps that move up or down using a conveyor belt and tracks keeping each step horizontal for the passenger. However, the escalator began as an amusement and not as a practical transport. The first patent relating to an escalator-like machine was granted in 1859 to a Massachusetts man for a steam driven unit. On March 15 1892, Jesse Reno patented his moving stairs or inclined elevator as he called it. In 1895, Jesse Reno created a new novelty ride at Coney Island from his patented design, a moving stairway that elevated passengers on a conveyor belt at a 25 degree angle.
Escalator = Scala +Elevator
The escalator as we know it was later re-designed by Charles Seeberger in 1897, who created the name ‚escalator‘ from the word ’scala‘, which is Latin for steps and the word ‚elevator‘, which had already been invented.
Charles Seeberger, together with the Otis Elevator Company produced the first commercial escalator in 1899 at the Otis factory in Yonkers, N.Y. The Seeberger-Otis wooden escalator won first prize at the Paris 1900 Exposition Universelle in France. Jesse Reno’s Coney Island ride success briefly made Jesse Reno into „the“ escalator designer and he founded the Reno Electric Stairways and Conveyors company in 1902.
Charles Seeberger sold his patent rights for the escalator to the Otis Elevator Company in 1910, who also bought Jesse Reno’s escalator patent in 1911. Otis then came to dominate escalator production, and combined and improved the various designs of escalators.
According to Otis, „In the 1920s, Otis engineers, led by David Lindquist, combined and improved the Jesse Reno and Charles Seeberger escalator designs, and created the cleated, level steps of the modern escalator in use today. Over the years, Otis dominated the escalator business, but lost the product’s trademark. The word escalator lost its proprietary status and its capital „e“ in 1950 when the U.S. Patent Office ruled that the word “escalator” had become just a common descriptive term for moving stairways.“
Jesse Reno
Jesse Wilford Reno, born 1861 in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, was an inventive young man who formulated his idea for an inclined moving stairway at age 16. After graduating from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, his engineering career took him to Colorado, then to Americus, Georgia where he is credited with building the first electric railway in the southern U.S. Reno submitted his first patent application for a „new and useful endless conveyor or elevator“ in 1891. It became effective 15 months later. The machine was built and installed at Coney Island, Brooklyn, as an amusement ride in September 1895. Moving stairways were just one arrow in the quiver, for in 1896, Reno developed plans for the building of the New York City subway, a double-decker underground system that could be completed in three years. With the plan not accepted, the inventor married and moved to London where he opened his new company, The Reno Electric Stairways and Conveyors, Ltd. in 1902. His pallet-type moving stairways were being installed throughout the U.S., Great Britain and Europe, but Reno became fascinated with a new challenge — building the first Spiral Moving Walkway. He joined with William Henry Aston, holder of a patent for the flexible pallet coupling and chain, to create the pioneering mechanism that was exhibited for four years and installed on the London railway at his own cost, but never used by the public. In 1903, the firm of Waygood and Otis Limited bought a third share in the Reno Company, but with the failure of the Spiral Walkway, Reno sold his patents to Otis and returned to the U.S
1896: First Escalator is Coney Island Ride
In 1891, Jesse Reno patented a moving stairway – actually a moving ramp – that was known as the „inclined elevator.“ In 1896, Reno installed his version of an escalator at the Old Iron Pier at Coney Island. The amusement park ride, which transported riders on a conveyor belt built at a 25-degree angle, was considered a novelty by the 75,000 people who rode it during its two-week Coney Island exhibition. Another inventor, Charles D. Seeberger, developed a moving stairway with wooden steps. Both were displayed at an international exhibition in Paris in 1900, where the word „escalator“ was coined. The Otis Elevator Company bought both patents, ultimately merging the two designs to create the escalator that is commonly used today. An early escalator is shown here in an 1899 photo.