Another Worry

By the 1880’s, the concern about a cab falling after a cable break was subsiding. Statistics by this time demonstrated that travel in an elevator was many times safer than travel by horizontal means of transportation and that even using a stairway carried a greater risk for pedestrians. The focus of elevator accident prevention was clearly shifting to another worry, namely, people falling into inadequately secured elevator shafts. The sliding doors which are used today did not appear until after World War II. In the 1880’s, manually operated hinged or folding doors of wire mesh on each floor still frequently misled careless passengers wishing to enter the cab into opening them and falling into the shaft.