Paternoster Lifts: Cyclic Chain Elevators with No Buttons, Doors or Stops (2016)
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99percentinvisible.org
In the course of the day it makes moving between adjacent floors for meetings completely effortless.
Sure, if you love stairs by all means take them. But no, it's just not convenient on the same level.
Also, jamming multiple elevator shafts into a building is usually non-trivial. If you have to choose between a paternoster and a regular elevator you will always pick a regular elevator because it helps people with movement disabilities (among other reasons).
There is a list in the German Wikipedia[0].
[0]: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_von_Paternosteraufzügen
I always make a point to go to the Rathaus and ride them when I visit.
The floors fold up where the lift's floor meets the building's floor to prevent crushing your foot. It also has a switch which immediately stops the paternoster and sounds an alarm. I had not realized that and stopped the system while showing it to my son.
My mother’s workplace had one when I was about seven, and I was terrified even to think about it.
I had a go on this a long time ago, the building was empty on Saturday and they turned the elevator on just for us who were having a programming competition there. We rode in circles, went over the top and jokingly returned in handstands, jumped on and off on each floor... And while they are generally pretty safe - each platform in upward shaft and in the cabin was on hinges, each top of the "door"frame and top of the cabin had a hanging piece of wood and if any of these things were moved, the elevator would stop, so your feet or other body parts won't be crushed if stuck between the cabin and the frame. But still, you can hurt yourself pretty badly (think broken bones or head injury) just from slipping or falling forward/backward if you try to step on or off too soon or too late.
Being twenty-somethings, we had a great fun on them, but if you think of people you see daily moving on escalators, in the mall, on the pavement, you can pretty easily see that an older person or a less coordinated person may have a problem with them.
Btw. For the brave out there, there is also an industrial "version" called belt manlift. Dying on them is pretty easy.
But unfortunately, that's not the only hazard pedestrians face from cars, not too long ago I saw a car jump the curb and run into a (fortunately) empty bus shelter. If anyone was waiting at that shelter, they'd have ended up under the car.
So yeah, I'd feel safer taking a paternoster every day than walking to work... at least then, my safety is in my own hands.
What a pointless and nonsense distinction to make. I was made to eat my vegetables as a child. They weren't physically forced down my throat.
What if the power shuts off at the peak? Or worse, at the bottom in the less trafficked basement level? So many questions.
> What if the power shuts off at the peak? Or worse, at the bottom in the less trafficked basement level?
Then you're stuck in there just like you'd be stuck in most other elevators (or slightly less, since you might be able to get into the engine room if you don't mind the fact that it could restart at any time).
They look like this from the inside:
There's a rather infamous warning sign associated with those:
http://i.imgur.com/2AphUVF.jpg
It even inspired a game:
I also think they're faster because less time is spent waiting for doors opening/closing.
Living in such a country now, it still somewhat annoys me when people talk about the "second floor" as being the one you reach after going up one level.
[1]I joked that it was more a dark warning of the dangers of bad civil engineering than the social commentary it's generally thought to be.
Thus the continuous force to overcome is just friction.
Because people apparently like them and because replacing an elevator is an expensive affair.
It’s not clear that paternoster lifts are really more dangerous than standard elevators. The failures of safeties described can happen with standard elevators as well.
A paternoster can transport at least 12 people per minute (depending on the speed of course) per direction from any floor to any floor, more if their travel paths don't overlap or people ignore the "max two people per cab" sign.
Second, throughput and latency. Every ~10 seconds, a cab for ~2 people arrives at each floor. That's a bit slower than if you press the button, the doors of a waiting elevator cab open, you get in, and it takes you to your direct destination. It's a lot faster than if you barely missed both elevators, and they stop at every second floor on the way up and down to let people in/out.
I wish we had one of these in our office.
They can theoretically squish you between the floor of a rising cabin and the ceiling, and between the ceiling of a cabin going down and the floor. To prevent this, you could place a movable board coupled to a sensor at ceiling of the cabin and the ceilings of the entry "doors". If the cabin starts squishing someone while going down, the board gets pushed upwards, and triggers an e-stop. If it starts squishing someone going upwards, again, the outer board at that floor gets pushed, and again, triggers the e-stop. (The board would have to be able to move more than the elevator needs to stop, obviously).
At that point, the remaining risk seems to be similar to regular elevators that don't have inner doors.
(Existing installations seem to have solved this passively with breakaway panels and gaps, which is probably good enough, but would make it possible to jump from the cabin into the shaft while it is between floors.)
Even in the care-free days of the early 20th century I don't think a device that would casually throw you around like that would be open to the public!
There were also no signs stating that you shouldn't ride over the top ... so we did and probably would have even if they flipped.
Based on the adage that every (non-)warning sign is there for a reason, I can only assume that there have been incidents of people panicking after they realized they had gone to far.
Just to be clear: it’s absolutely safe to go around. Any other stories you may hear are the inside joke of those five beaurocrats on the top floor enjoying their tiny fiefdom of chaos.
Edit: could people downvoting this please give a reason? I’m really not complaining, just terribly curious what could possibly stroke people the wrong way in this benign post. Or is this the Paternoster conspiracy coordinating to keep their secret?
There is a variation which isn't - the "man lift".[1] Those are dangerous, and sometimes seen in parking garages for staff only. Those really do turn upside down at the top. They're usually equipped with a switch to shut them down if someone rides past the top landing.
But if you jostle the car while it's going around the top or bottom, there's a risk of jamming the mechanism.
Thanks to the warning signs I wasn't really afraid. They made me realize that this sort of thing likely happens quite regularly.
I used to do this in the Paternoster in the Roger Stevens building at the Uni Of Leeds in the 1980s.
Imagine you’re in a building with 22 floors, and your event with a few hundred people just ended on the 18th floor. The elevator has three bays with cars that only carry about 20 people at a time.
While you’re in the crowd waiting to go down, you hear elevator cars race to the top of the building, then when they come back down, the doors open and you’re met by a car that is already packed with people. A lot of the passengers are avoiding making eye contact, and wait a second, some of them look like people you just saw leaving by the stairs in the fire escape!
Apparently, the elevator algorithm is trying to be efficient by starting at the highest floor with a request. Do you wait where you are, take the fire escape up one floor, two floors, or just walk down 18 floors moderately disgusted with the situation?
Where I’ve seen this happen is after speaking events in the university clubs near Grand Central Station in New York. The complete dynamics of the situation probably involve a minor risk to social reputation, and some people playfully trying out game theory to amuse their friends.
The debate over whether such devices violate religious rules is pretty interesting. I have to imagine if there's an omnipotent deity looking upon on his followers from on high, he'd be thinking something like: Very clever, humans, but you know exactly why I made the rule, and it wasn't so you could win on a slight technicality by not pushing any buttons.
There are also Shabbat ovens. Turn on/off automatically, so you are not operating the machine!
A Shabbat oven could square with the spirit of the law if you do all your prep the day before and put it in a timed oven to enjoy later. Pretty similar in principle to people in an agrarian society harvesting before their day of rest so they can enjoy a meal together without laboring.
Islamic finance is a similar work-around, since charging interest (riba/usury) is against some interpretations of Sharia law. Banks structure special products that don't make guaranteed interest payments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_banking_and_finance#Su...
I actually quite like the idea of setting aside some time for family and community without work, modern machinery or electronics.
(In a somewhat more reasonable/funny bending of the rules; Jews are apparently also forbidden to "tear cloth" on the Shabbat, since that counted as work back in the day for tailors etc. However, after some discussions in the rabbinate there is now "Shabbat toilet paper", which does not come on a roll but as loose leaves of paper so you don't have to do any tearing on the day itself.)
After more reading, there is apparently a sect that (while otherwise quite orthodox) considers electricity from photovoltaic power not to violate the commandment of "not making fire" and so provided they have PV panels or batteries they can use electricity freely on Shabbat. Still not for working of course, but a light would be OK.
http://www.kosherswitch.com/live/tech/how
the name says it all, but the actual way they devised to workaround the issue is IMHO extremely clever:
"Our technology revolves around several layers of Halachic uncertainty, randomness, and delays, such that Halachically, a user’s action is not considered to have caused a given reaction."
Do they? I can't imagine why an omnipotent deity would give a shit about whether or not people use electricity. What is the reason given?
It's important to note that not every member of a religious group interprets rules or follows them in the same manner. There are strict Orthodox Jewish sects that hew closely to these laws, and I've known many people from a Reform Jewish background who don't even keep Kosher. You see the same thing in Christianity with branches having varying degrees of liberal/strict rules. Individuals within those groups are even more varied still--for example many Catholics visit the Church only for Christmas/Easter and use birth control.