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Skylines Unlimited ~ 1950 Otis Elevator Company
🕑 Added 2020-02-14 20:25:05 +0000 UTCmore at http://quickfound.net/
Fragment used as a Jam Handy animation demo.
Originally a public domain film from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otis_Elevator_Company
Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
The Otis Elevator Company is an American company (owned by United Technologies) that develops, manufactures and markets elevators, escalators, moving walkways, and related equipment. Based in Farmington, Connecticut, Otis is the world's largest manufacturer of vertical transportation systems, principally focusing on elevators, moving walkways, and escalators. The company pioneered the development of the "safety elevator", invented by Elisha Otis in 1852, which used a special mechanism to lock the elevator car in place should the hoisting ropes fail.
Otis has installed elevators in some of the world's most famous structures, including the Eiffel Tower, Empire State Building, the original World Trade Center, The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, Petronas Twin Towers, Burj Khalifa, CN Tower, the Winchester Mystery House, the Hotel del Coronado, the Demarest Building (first electric elevator), the Singing Tower at Bok Tower Gardens, and the Skylon Tower...
In 1852 Elisha Otis invented the safety elevator, which automatically comes to a halt if the hoisting rope breaks. After a demonstration at the 1854 New York World's Fair the elevator industry established credibility.
The Otis Elevator Company was founded in Yonkers, New York in 1853 by Elisha Otis. When Elisha died in 1861, his sons Charles and Norton formed a partnership and continued the business. During the American Civil War, their elevators were in high demand due to the shipment of war materials. Businesses throughout the United States purchased them. In 1864, with the partnership of J.M. Alvord, the company became known as Otis Brothers & Co. In 1867, Otis opened a factory in Yonkers, New York, the city where the company was founded.
In 1925, the world's first fully automatic elevator, Collective Control, was introduced. Otis opened a factory in Bloomington, Indiana in 1965.
Fayette S. Dunn became president of the company in 1964, succeeding the late Percy Douglas. Otis was acquired by United Technologies in 1976 and became a wholly owned subsidiary. In 1981, the Yonkers factory closed, and was later purchased by Kawasaki for use as a rail car assembly plant. Also in 1981, Otis signed a business agreement with an elevator company in China and Francois Jaulin became president. In 1989 Karl J. Krapek became president of the company and was replaced in 1991 by Jean-Pierre van Rooy.
Otis has also dabbled in horizontal automated people-mover "shuttle" systems, such as the Otis Hovair. In 1996, Otis formed a joint venture called "Poma-Otis Transportation Systems" with the French company Pomagalski to promote these products. That partnership has since ended.
Otis Elevator Company purchased Evans Lifts in the UK when Evans Lifts Ltd went bankrupt in 1997 during its merge with Express Lift Company with the name ExpressEvans. It was the oldest and largest manufacturer of lift equipment in the UK, and was based in Leicester, England. Otis' Customer Care Centre is still based in the old Evans Lifts building in Leicester. The building has since been extended by Otis. There are some installations of Evans Lifts in use today. Few lifts made by Otis are branded as Evans. Notably, an original Evans Lift is still in the Silver Arcade in Leicester. It formerly transported people to the upper floors. The upper floors are no longer occupied: the lift is no longer used. Also in 1997, Steve Page became president of Otis Elevator Co
In 1999, Otis acquired CemcoLift, Inc, located in Hatfield, Pennsylvania. The operation was later closed in October 2012, with the remaining business being sold to Minnesota Elevator Inc. In 2002, Ari Bousbib became president of Otis.
In February 2007, European Union regulators fined Otis Elevator €225 million ($295.8 million) for being part of a price-fixing cartel in the Belgian, Dutch, Luxembourg, and German markets. Competitors ThyssenKrupp, Schindler Group, KONE, and Mitsubishi Elevator Europe were also fined for participating in the same cartel...
