Elevators
Our Local Correspondents: Up and Then Down
Interesting article on elevators. Some highlights:
The story of a man trapped on an elevator for 41 hours
Loading up an empty elevator car with discarded Christmas trees, pressing the button for the top floor, then throwing in a match, so that by the time the car reaches the top it is ablaze with heat so intense that the alloy (called “babbitt”) connecting the cables to the car melts, and the car, a fireball now, plunges into the pit: this practice, apparently popular in New York City housing projects, is inadvisable.
What's wrong with the people who do this sort of thing?
In most elevators, at least in any built or installed since the early nineties, the door-close button doesn’t work. It is there mainly to make you think it works.
Just like those buttons that are supposed to help you cross the street, no doubt.