Who patented the escalator first?
The first ESCALATOR was the Reno Inclined Elevator, patented by Jesse W. Reno of New York on 15 March 1892, and first installed at the Old Iron Pier on Coney Island in the autumn of 1896. The Reno escalator consisted of an inclined endless-belt conveyor made up of wooden slats each 10 cm wide and 60 cm long. The grooved slats had rubber-covered cleats running in a forward direction to give the necessary grip and passed under comb-plates at either end of the belt, as in a modem escalator. An electric motor drove the conveyor and its plush-covered rubber handrails at a speed of about 1 1/2, mph.
The first practical MOVING STAIRCASE (i.e. with flat steps) was patented by an American inventor called Charles A. Wheeler on 2 August 1892. This did not have a comb-plate landing device, and passengers had to get on and off via a side entrance. Although Wheeler’s escalator was never actually built, his patent was purchased in 1898 by Charles D. Seeberger, who incorporated its flat-step feature into an improved design of his own. Seeberger’s prototype model was built by the Otis Elevator Co., with whom he made a manufacturing agreement, and brought into operation at their Yonkers, N.Y. factory on 9 June 1899.
The first SEEBERGER ESCALATOR in public use was installed at the Paris Exposition in 1900. It was brought back to America the following year and re-erected at Gimbel’s Department Store on 8th Street, Philadelphia, where it continued to operate until 1939.
The first STEP-TYPE ESCALATOR with a comb-plate landing device was the Otis `L’ which, embodying the salient features of both the Reno and Seeberger models, was introduced commercially in 1921. Since that date there have been no radical departures in fundamental escalator design.
