History of Escalators Timeline

Around May 1895, Charles Seeberger began drawings for an escalator form similar to the designs George Wheeler had patented in 1892.

Jesse Reno produced the first working escalator, known as the inclined elevator, and installed it beside the Old Iron Pier at Coney Island in New York City in 1896.

Piat installed a stepless escalator in the Harrods Knightsbridge store. The device was unveiled on November 16, 1898, and Piat later relinquished its patent rights to the department store.

Seeberger teamed with the Otis Elevator Company in 1899. Together they produced the first commercial escalator, with Otis building Seeberger's prototype.

Charles Seeberger bought George Wheeler's patents. Features of Wheeler's designs were subsequently incorporated into Seeberger's prototype.

The Seeberger-Otis escalator won first prize at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle, helping establish the device's public profile.

Image source: Exposition Universelle (1900)

During the first half of the twentieth century, manufacturers developed competing escalator products but marketed them under different names because Otis held trademark rights to escalator. Peelle used Motorstair, while Westinghouse used Electric Stairway.

Hocquardt received European patent rights for the Fahrtreppe, or moving staircase, in 1906.

Although Schindler later became the world's largest escalator maker, its first escalator installation did not occur until 1936.

Schindler entered the United States market in 1979 by purchasing the Haughton Elevator company.

In the twenty-first century, Schindler became the world's largest maker of escalators and the second-largest maker of elevators.

Jesse Reno designed the first escalators installed in an underground subway system: a helical escalator at Holloway Road tube station in London in 1906.

The St Anna Pedestrian Tunnel beneath the Scheldt River in Antwerp, Belgium, opened in 1933 and used escalators to connect pedestrians with the underground crossing.

The Maastunnel's bicycle and pedestrian tunnel, adjacent to its road tunnel in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, opened in 1942.

In most escalator models manufactured after 1950, both the riser and tread of each step were cleated, or ribbed. Their comb-like protrusions mesh with the comb plates on the platforms and with succeeding steps in the chain.

In the mid-twentieth century, some escalator handrails used a rubber-bellows design. Rings of smooth metal cladding, called bracelets, were placed between the coils.

A single-width escalator traveling at approximately 0.5 metres per second can move about 2,000 people per hour when passengers ride single file.

The Tyne Cyclist and Pedestrian Tunnel in Tyne and Wear, England, was constructed in 1951 and incorporated escalator access for tunnel users.

By 1973, Gilbert Luna had obtained West German, Japanese, and United States patents for his version of a spiral escalator.

The world's first practical spiral escalator, a Mitsubishi model, was installed in Osaka, Japan, in 1985.

The Smithsonian Institution considered reassembling one of its historic 1914 escalator units in its Americana collection. Logistics and reassembly costs ultimately outweighed nostalgia, and the project was discarded.

Some wooden Reno-type escalators continued operating at Downtown Crossing, an MBTA station, until preparations for Boston's Big Dig around 1991 led to their removal.

Karl-Heinz Pahl received both a European patent and a United States patent for a spiral escalator in 1992.

John P. Spriggs and James F. Evans patented an updated drive wheel system in 1995. Some escalators use this system today.