Paternoster Lift | Hacker News Reader

Paternoster Lift

en.wikipedia.org

142 pointsfortran77112 comments

The university that I went to in the late eighties had a paternoster in a tall (10+ floor) building and they were great fun. Very quick and easy to move between floors. I always liked using them.

I remember zoneing out once while riding them and accidentally going over the top. From what I remember there was a sign on the wall that faced the compartment after it passed the top floor cautioning you to keep still - presumbly so you didn't trigger a motion sensor while your cab engaged with the drive wheel. It was no big deal.

Second year students used to scare the nervous first year newbies by going under or over and emerging standing on their hands.

Sheffield?

Not the OP but I was at Sheffield in the late 80s and remember the paternoster in the Arts tower well!

Still there, still looks terrifying!

I was about to say the same.

If curious, past threads:

Paternoster Lifts: Cyclic Chain Elevators with No Buttons, Doors or Stops (2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16562742 - March 2018 (112 comments)

Lovin' their elevator: why Germans are loopy about paternosters - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10058885 - Aug 2015 (56 comments)

Paternoster - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9284672 - March 2015 (72 comments)

I used to use one almost every day when I was studying at CVUT FEL. Sure it looks cool but riding it is not all that great. If you are alone, it's relatively fine. But when multiple people want to get in or out it becomes quite a hassle because you need to move before the lift fully reaches the floor, otherwise there's not enough time for the others. Also, do you know what happens if you touch the inside of the lift's shaft? The whole freaking thing immediately stops. Guess how I know.

If you're curious about what it actually looks like when you loop around, have a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ey5b3qm3-EI

Ski lifts & air trams solved this problem by uncoupling the passenger unit from the cable at the entry / exit stations - the chairs therefore "loiter" around the passenger area for longer. I think another commenter mentioned a similar system, too.

Sadly, impractical in this case. The ski lifts work because there are (usually) only two (but occassionally 3) terminals. In contrast, the point of a paternoster is that every floor is a terminal.

If it hadn’t been surpassed by regular elevators you could easily design one that would “drop” a car at a floor and then the next hook would pick it up.

Or just stop turning for a bit. Not worth it likely.

Not at all, IMO.

I did a little bit of reasoning after reading this thread (I fucking love paternosters), and thought that any measure you could take to improve the safety or efficiency would likely have a detrimental effect. For example, if you did decouple the carriages at the floors, then there would be a period of accelleration where embarkment would be much more dangerous. People would still attempt to jump onto the carriages during this phase, because we can't avoid people being people. I know for sure I'd take that risk.

I think the way they're run now (slow and steady) is ideal, and investing heavily in sensors so they can stop and restart quickly elevates this. Overengineered solutions about coupling and (god help us) doors will probably solve a couple of minor issues and create a few new major ones.

There is also one at the main česká pošta by Brno hlavní nádraží. I was excited to try it but I had the same feeling - it's not a place for more than one person. And I am glad I read your sentence about touching the lift shaft before I did it myself because I would have 100% done the same thing.

See also Tom Scott's paternoster video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgJBD1wf-YQ

I used to take the very same paternoster daily, too! The trick is to jump half a metre up or down to give the other person plenty of time to comfortably enter or leave.

I wish they weren't as dangerous. They really are a huge improvement on the conventional elevator in terms of efficiency.

At Sheffield, many people are scared of the paternoster so choose the elevators opposite. I'd guess the paternoster riders still outnumber that crowd, by at least a factor of 5. Despite the pressure, there was rarely a queue for the paternoster at 0845, but there was for the two massive elevators opposite. The elevator congestion gets so bad the university employs an attendant, with one carriage assigned to the odd floors, and the other the evens.

The paternoster is just so much easier. You don't have to press a button, wait ages, then have multiple slow stops en-route.

You do occassionally have to wait for a carriage - Sheffield had max 2 per carriage, and it is generally considered rude to get in a carriage with a stranger outside of peak hours. There's also the risk of stoppages, which are particularly painful if your carriage is in the ~1.5m window between floors (+/- 1m based on your athleticism) where you can't find a way to get out. In that case, I hope you're not claustrophobic.

I'm not sure when you were there, but when I was there, there were huge queues in the morning. People used to sneak downstairs and jump on the paternoster either before it went under the bottom or as it was going up.

Very bad form, but people did it. Admittedly, more often at 0859 than 0845...

Although new Paternosters most likely will never be built, the Thyssen-Krupp Multi has been in development for quite some time now and the result partially resembles Paternoster, but adds things like per-cabin independence and freely routed (also horizontal) movement to the whole idea.

https://youtu.be/E7QlAsxJP-g

I don't know whether there are plans for an actual deployment of this technology right now, but the idea and concept by itself is fascinating.

By the voiceover, I can always tell a German company produced english video. There's a very particular accent.

Interesting. I'm German, and I cannot recognize any sort of German accent in this.

Not OP for me, Mobility at 47 was a hint, but it's not super noticeable. Dunno what they were picking up on.

Seconding grandparent's assessment. The speaking style in the video is very similar to Deutsche Welle broadcasts that I used to watch in uni.

Not sure if this style happens organically when native German speakers master English or if it's a deliberate choice like the Transatlantic Accent of early 20th century American actors.

Perhaps not the accent. But there's a chance you would cut your sentences a tinge differently when not based on a German original.

The phrasing seems very slightly different than natural (for a native English speaker).

For example: "2003, the twin elevator changed the industry. Two cabins, independently in one shaft."

To me, it's just slightly weird to say "independently" without a specific action. It reads like what the cabins are doing independently is... just being. I think a native speaker would be more likely to say, "Two cabins moving independently in one shaft." Then the adverb has a verb to modify.

Or, "two independent cabins in one shaft."

There is also a Tom Scott video about the test tower for the Thyssen Multi, with some more details

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdTsbFS4xmI

It will be interesting to see how it will be used. You really need someone bold enough to design a building around high capacity, 2d elevators. And if the elevators don't work out you have severe problems using the building ... Selling this has to be an uphill battle until it's proven in a few locations.

I live close to the tower and I was really positively surprised how it turned out. It is located next to Rottweil, the oldest town of Baden-Württemberg with a lot of buildings of historical value. There was the fear it would destroy its overall appearance, but I feel like it complements it just perfect. Especially during sunrise/sunset the light creates a beautiful effect on the tower's winding facade.

See: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:TK-Elevator-Te...

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:TK-Elevator-Te...

> the Thyssen-Krupp Multi has been in development for quite some time now and the result partially resembles Paternoster, but adds things like per-cabin independence and freely routed (also horizontal) movement to the whole idea.

Finally someone is working to make turbolifts from Star Trek happen.

Or the Great Glass Elevator from Mr Wonka's chocolate factory.

So it's basically turbolifts for skyscrapers!

Terrific things, there is one at the University in Sheffield. At the start of each academic year, freshers dare each-other to "go around the bottom" to the extent that there are stern warnings posted about this unbalancing the mechanism and leading to it stopping working (I'm pretty sure that's not true).

Essex has (had?) one too, with the warning/invitation: "Overtravel in lift is not dangerous, but not recommended."

As I remember it, it said "overtravel through the loft and sump ...". Overtravel through the sump was somehow a lot less appealing than through the loft.

"Overtravel in lift is not fun" would probably make a better deterrent.

Shout out to the arts tower at Uni Sheffield, the first place I ever saw one of these!

Here is a segment that The One Show did on the University in Sheffield one, for anyone who is interested in seeing it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAjYAfb_HPk

We routinely over traveled in the paternoster in the Lecture theatres at the Uni of Leeds in the 1980s. If you were on the top floor the queues to go down could be very long so it was faster to go up and over and effectively jump the queu.

Never saw any injuries, incidentally

One of my highest rated comments on reddit is about cutting the queue to go down from the top floor of a high-rise building by walking down the stairs to the floor below and requesting an elevator up.

We have two functional paternosters in my hometown and you can easily drive around the clock in them. There are warning signs, but once you miss the last stop there are another signs that tell you not to panic.

Reminds me about an elevator in a hotel in LA, around ~2008. The hotel and the elevator made the distinct impression of being about a century old. Maybe it even said so in the brochure.

In the elevator there was a plaquate(?) wich said something like in case of an emergency, don't panic. I mean, in which cases are we supposed to panic then?

It's fine to panic in safe situations.

I think the warning is more to discourage people from using the other direction as a shortcut.

That, and the huge chain wheels at the ends are even more dangerous to get things stuck in.

Going in the wrong direction is never a shortcut. It could be used to avoid waiting for an empty car.

Hence, a shortcut.

My mother visited my sister at Sheffield University years ago and accidentally ended up going over the top-of course it was fine but it somehow took her by surprise and she mentions it every time the topic of Sheffield comes up.

'accidentally'

Like, there's no problem with going around the top. At Sheffield, the mechanics are all hidden away enough that the risk of catching something is fairly low. These areas became a site of illicit advertisements. Some of the best raves were publicised with posters over the top, for example.

The bigger risk is that the lift stops while you're in the top. Even then, it usually gets going within 20 minutes.

20 minutes ? wow, that's quite a long time to spend in such a small place and if you are outside the normal zone

There is also the "man engine" which was used in mines until the developement of steel cable based lifts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_engine

The animation looks dangerous, but it's neat to read workers liked them and they were safer in practice than ladders.

That page got me to https://www.humphrey-manlift.com/belt-manlift/

It surprises me that, apparently, you can still buy these. They look too risky to me for modern risk-averse society (what if personnel carries a ruck sack? Is too voluminous to fit through that floor hole?)

I assume this is addressed by only having them accessible for trained personnel vs. the general public. It could also be solved by having a pressure sensitive, breakaway panel that stops the lift (triggers one stopping distance before a hard edge is reached).

I don’t really see that as much more dangerous than various other forms of heavy equipment - think bucket trucks and those forklift attachments that turn them into bucket trucks - vs climbing a power pole.

Thought the exact thing the first time I saw one in a Chicago full service parking garage. And they had very stern signs about being for employees only. So ya that’s likely how they solve the liability problem. But man they looked really cool. So wanted to try it out ;)

Funny, that’s the one and only place I’ve seen one as well (it was 35 years ago, on the Gold Coast just north of downtown...). I was just gearing up to post about this when I saw your post.

My dad told me about those, in the factory where he worked. He said that once a guy put his tool caddy on the platform, the guy at the top forgot to take it off for him, and the whole place was raining tools.

There were several in Stuttgart. One at a Uni building, which I've heard is now defunct. Two are in the Stuttgart Rathaus. They may still be in service.

I was showing my son that the floor will fold up so it won't cut your foot off, but I did not see the switch attached. The floor edge folded up, the switch stopped the Paternoster and sounded the alarm. I apologized to people there that there was no real problem and waited a few minutes for them to turn it back on. My son told on me when we got home.

I’d like to know if the Rathaus one is still going. I rode through the top once and it was a little scary.

I'm shocked that they're estimated as being only 30x more dangerous than conventional elevators.

I would have guessed thousands of times more dangerous.

Having used one, I guess people just behave differently. For example, when riding an elevator, you might be looking at your smartphone, but if you take the stairs, you don't.

Getting onto and off a paternoster is pretty exciting, so you won't be bored enough to look at the smartphone :-)

Conventional closing-doors elevators are just absurdly safe, even stairs (moving or non-moving) are more dangerous. People die around elevators when climbing onto the roof when it gets stuck or forcing the doors open instead of staying put. Once it gets moving again bad things can happen.

But as hinted at in the safety section, with modern sensors and some brains behind them paternoster can be made safe. You can even make them wheelchair accessible by gradually stopping a cabin and informing all other passengers about that.

And when a department in a large and busy office building is spread across a few floors then a paternoster is the most efficient way of moving between floors.

> Conventional closing-doors elevators are just absurdly safe, even stairs (moving or non-moving) are more dangerous.

I used this argument when my workplace was encouraging people to "take the stairs" for supposed health reasons. It was rejected because science and statistics are only accepted when they support one's desired conclusions.

The health improvements might outweigh the risk of injury from falling on the stairs.

This is the case for cycling vs driving to work in at least some cities.

They’re moving slowly (they get their efficiency from as good as eliminating waiting times, not from moving at high speed), and (typically) are only used in areas where most of the riders are healthy adults (personnel lifts in office buildings)

And as another user already said, they look scary enough to make you pay attention.

I think there’s a lot going on in that 30x stat and I wish the citation was better:

- most elevator accidents occur during maintenance, which I assume is similar for paternosters. So the fact that elevators are seemingly safer for passengers might not statistically factor in much to the overall safety record: e.g. paternosters could be 1000x as dangerous for passengers but only 5x as dangerous for technicians

- relatedly, I would suspect most paternosters are better maintained than most elevators and less likely to have a dangerous mechanical failure

- and as the commenters stated, passengers are likely to be more alert when using a paternoster (no accidents like stepping in to an empty shaft)

Regardless I suspect you are correct that a well-maintained paternoster is at least hundreds of times more dangerous for passengers than a well-maintained elevator. As far as I can tell the stats given on Wikipedia don’t refute that (but I wish I knew more about their source).

What injuries would be common on a paternoster?

I don’t think any injuries would be common and that paternosters are safer than stairs and escalators. Intuitively it seems that crushing accidents on the extremities would be quite a bit more likely than elevators, along with tripping accidents when entering/leaving the paternoster.

The obvious one (getting half in the car and getting crushed) is likely relatively uncommon - as it should be possible to make the engine weak enough that it can’t do major harm.

Wouldn't the momentum of the system alone do that?

It's not always perfecrly balanced though. The motor needs to handle the case where loads of people are going up but nobody is going down.

> make the engine weak enough that it can’t do major harm.

This doesn’t make sense to me. Outside of sensors that can automatically shut the motor off, the motor is definitely strong enough to do major damage in an unlikely crushing incident - it could easily sever or otherwise destroy a limb without even slowing down the carriage. The motor in any elevator has to be extremely strong: it’s not like paternosters slow down due to strain when people enter them.

To put it a bit gruesomely, the motor doesn’t notice the difference between lifting a 100kg passenger or applying the same amount of shear force to a trapped arm.

In 2019, there was an accident at Stuttgart Rathaus in which an employee suffered a broken bone, according to city officials, but was still able to see a doctor on his own. Further details about the accident are not known.

There were parliamentary moves to ban paternosters in Germany some time ago. However, the Bundesrat prevented this at the time. Later, operation was re-regulated with stricter safety requirements. This then mainly concerned the installation of all kinds of signs about the correct way to get on and off and to remain calm during the turnaround if you missed the last exit.

Personally, I would guess that most accidents are falls from getting on too late going down or too early going up.

Falling down the shaft when there's no carriage at your floor

While definitely a risk: this seems extremely easy to prevent. Put a plate dangling below each carriage, so there's no human-size gap between them.

There are still moving things with small gaps though, without non-moving times, so some number of injuries seems unavoidable. Given enough time, you can always discover an inattentive person.

> Put a plate dangling below each carriage, so there's no human-size gap between them.

I've seen a few paternosters in action and just checked a few random YouTube videos and I'm fairly sure that that pretty much all of them have plates between carriages. Your parent's concern appears unfounded.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternoster_lift#:~:text=In%20...

The source for that doesn't say that the man fell between carriages. There's not enough detail to tell what happened. But yes, this particular paternoster might have been a bad apple.

I wonder how that compares to escalators, given how safe elevators are.

Tom Scott: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgJBD1wf-YQ

The police office in Babylon Berlin has one

I am so glad to live in the city with still operational, publicly accessible Paternoster. The city is called Wuppertal and it the Paternoster is in the city hall. Its worth a visit, we also have the Schwebebahn. Otherwise its a bit of a screwed up post-industrial city.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternosteraufzug#/media/Datei... https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternosteraufzug#/media/Datei...

The name was the most interesting part for me:

> The name paternoster ("Our Father", the first two words of the Lord's Prayer in Latin) was originally applied to the device because the elevator is in the form of a loop and is thus similar to rosary beads used as an aid in reciting prayers.

Huh. I always assumed it was because they looked a bit like a confessional with the two doors side-by-side.

Many years ago I worked in Viscount House (since demolished) at Heathrow Airport where there was a paternoster lift. One day a workman tried to take a wooden ladder through it - it didn't fit. The result was... loud.

I thought it was quite fun to use, but for years after I had minor nightmares about being in the thing with various things going wrong. My subconscious apparently wasn't a fan!

In Flemish (and probably Dutch but not sure) the word paternoster is used for rosary beads. I had never heard of the paternoster lift before now but just hearing the name made it immediately clear to me what it was.

It makes perfect sense; I just never questioned the etymology I invented.

Nah, the joke was that you ought to say your prayers before using the thing.

There are some Paternosters still in operation in Czechia. Funny stuff when you're young, but any infirmity or trouble walking pretty much precludes you from using them.

Hey, it's a ring buffer for people.

Traditionally, "rotating" a ring buffer meant incrementing the pointer to the start, or (equivalently) the offset within the ring. But, given where modern processor architectures are at; if the data fits in CPU cache, could there be circumstances where it's better to rotate the entire buffer?

Probably more dangerous than a Peloton threadmill.

I think this is wrong way to use word "dangerous".

"Dangerous" should be left for when it easy for a normal person to get hurt or get somebody else hurt even when they are attentive and act rationally.

A device that can suddenly explode when correctly used is "dangerous".

I think this lift is perfectly safe as is Peloton threadmil, knives, cars, and bunch other stuff, because each can be operated safely and more than that, it is with a capability of a normal person to operate the device safely. Whether they choose to do so is another matter.

The threadmill cases were due to adults leaving safety keys in the threadmill.

How is a threadmill with a functional safety key described as "dangerous" because some stupid parent left it with a key in?

If you are a moron you can make anything dangerous.

What stops a child/pet from injury even when an adult is properly using the safety key?

Plastic bags are not inherently dangerous to most adults, but we consider them to be a danger for animals and small children. Danger in this context extends to more than your target demographic for a product.

You'll find communication easier if you use the common shared meanings of words.

I wonder: We have ski lifts that detach from the cable so that they can move at a different speed when loading than when transporting. It seems like a similar thing could be done with an elevator so that there is a continuously moving cable, but it detaches from the cable to stop at a floor, and then reattaches after loading. You could add traditional doors, and a safety mechanism that halts the cable if a door fault causes a potential collision.

Perhaps added costs of this system make it less desirable than just adding more elevator shafts.

This would basically be a cable car but vertically? I remember being most fascinated by the Skyride at Alton Towers as it works like this.

I wonder what it is about this that captures the Hacker News imagination? Something about it being a "better" solution which we, as a society, have been inexplicably denied?

In the 80ies I saw a paternoster filing cabinet at a municipality.

Paternoster lifts (or a close relative[0]) are sometimes used in warehouses; at a former employer we had two units with X shelves - probably around 20 - each, storing a metric shitload of parts. (Each shelf being approx. 1x4m/3.3x13ft)

Did sound a bit like the Götterdämmerung while it did its thing, but absurdly efficient space utilization.

0) Close relative as the mechanism is the same, however they tend to only run when a specific storage location is requested, not continuously.)

Have seen them at libraries. Somehow they are able to dump off containers of books at the proper floor for reshelving.

I remember the Sheffield ones well from the early 90's.

I imagine Sheffield University are stuck with them, there simply isn't enough space in the building core for conventional lifts to meet the requirement to move a lot of students up and down the building in the short space of time between lectures. I do remember the conventional lifts being quite big, but with long waits.

I did a senior design project in school with the Coors Brewery, largest in the US (world?). I'll always remember their "manlifts" that never stop, and can take you to all floors of the Brewery. Like these...

https://youtu.be/fCPRAjWn8hU

In David Lodge's novel, "Small World," there's a great scene where one character chases another through a paternoster. The one being chased thinks that the compartment will flip over when it reaches the top, and comes down standing on his head!

The first I ever knew of it was in the 1985 German comedy Manner (Men) that featured it in the credits. Intensifyingly funny.

[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089656/

Why don't they have them tick like clocks so it actually stops at a floor?

Wikipedia days Hitachi launched one that does that.

Why never before? Because modern elevators were invented.

Have ridden the ones at Goethe Uni in Frankfurt, Germany. Love them!

I checked one of these out in Prague after seeing this in a past HN posting. Pretty cool. Definitely some safety concerns, but it beats the stairs in an old walk-up.

When I was a kid I always wanted to go up to the top but I was afraid that it would turn upside down and I'd fall on my face. I still regret not trying it.

Riding one of these is definitely on my todo list, but afaik we don't have any in my country.

Came here expecting to find a heart-warming hitch-hiking story about the quaint village of Paternoster in South Africa.

Learnt about an inventive passenger elevator instead! :-)

Literally lost 30 mins on YouTube watching these things in action. Thanks?

I see a lot of links to the Tom Scott video in this thread, but I found this one from Atomic Frontier more informative: https://youtu.be/-Kq1D6FS7LM

There was one at the college where I studied. Scary as hell :)

I worked in an agency that had one of these in germany. You are not allowed to build new ones but the ones that are installed can still be used. It's kinda scary for the first three or four times but after that it's an amazing use of transportation in an office. The thing that most people freaks out is going over the turn because everything is dark and you see the motors directly in front of your face.

We dressed ours up as tunnel of horror on halloween, good times.

Obligatory Tom Scott: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgJBD1wf-YQ

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