Author: Joe Caperna

Commentary: A few months had passed since I published the first two episodes, and I had already started getting feedback on future episodes that listeners wanted to hear about. My creative backlog started to grow. I was in my teens when Mission:Impossible was released, so I still remember seeing it in the theater. It was a new brand of action movie/spy thriller/heist film that I really enjoyed. at this point in the podcast series, I was starting to look for movies with very clear and impactful elevator scenes that would translate well to the analysis I was trying to do. I wanted listeners to be able to visualize the concepts that I was talking about while seeing them clearly on the big screen. I have never done a lot of marketing, but after I published this episode, I started to tell more people about the podcast and spread the word. I was excited to discuss the mission of the podcast with everyone, that is to increase awareness of the reality of elevators versus what we see on film most of the time.

Notable elevator concepts in this episode:

• Safety circuit (“safety chain”) components and function
• Hoistway doors, locks, and closers
• Cab shell design and structure
• Hoistway design and overhead refuge
• Hall call security
• Elevator pit design

Episode Transcript: Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai

“This movie came out in 1996 and was a theatrical spin-off of the original TV series from the 1960s. The film went on to produce a franchise of six current sequels, with at least one other that hasn’t been released yet. This first installment stars Tom Cruise, Kristen Scott Thomas, Jon Voight, Jon Renau, Ving Rhames, and some special appearances from Emilio Estevez and others. From IMDB, the description reads, An American agent under false suspicion of disloyalty must discover and expose the real spy without the help of his organization.

The origin of this plot is from an early scene in the movie. The Impossible Mission Force, or IMF team, led by Tom Cruise, is on a mission in Prague to intercept the purchase of a knock list. This list is essentially a rolodex of the real names of secret agents worldwide.

During this mission, Cruise and Thomas infiltrate an underground office that is used by the perpetrator of this illegal sale. In order to gain access to this area, Tom Cruise needs to first get access to the elevator.

One caveat in our analysis of this film is that we really don’t have intimate knowledge of elevator code in foreign countries. For discussion purposes, I will use standard United States elevator code as a basis for our discussion.

Essentially, this first mission of the film takes place in and around the U.S. embassy in Prague, Czech Republic. Just some history on the building from Wikipedia. The Chancery is located on Veleska Street in Prague. It occupies the historic Schoenborn Palace and includes an extensive garden. The compound also includes a research facility, library, and lecture hall. The U.S. embassy website states that the building is composed of four wings around three courtyards containing over 100 rooms. Also, that the ceilings on the first floor are 30 feet high. This is evidenced in the scene when you can see the multiple staircases and high ceilings.

In the first part of this scene at 10 minutes and 50 seconds, we see Emilio Estevez enter the elevator hoistway through a small access door in the elevator pit. On this, it’s not completely unheard of to have a door in the elevator pit and it’s actually fairly common on many buildings with deeper elevator pits. However, in this case, there would likely be a switch tied into the door which would stop the elevator in flight when you open the door. This is for the purpose of safety and preventing a person from getting struck by the elevator if they enter the door at the wrong time.

You can see the hydraulic buffer as he enters. With this shallow pit depth, it would be essential to have a switch on that door wired into the elevator safety circuit.

Emilio looks up to see a junction box somewhat high up in the hoistway. He climbs up the side of the guide rails as we’ll see in more detail later. We also see that the elevator counterweight is suspended by two cables. This is somewhat important to our analysis later.

This always confuses me in films because in real life, there’s essentially never a ladder inside the hoistway. You see that in a lot of movies but the last thing you want is anyone in the elevator hoist when the elevator is running, especially someone climbing up a straight ladder that’s 200 feet high.

Now, Emilio is in the hoistway essentially for one purpose only and that is provide remote access to the elevator security and operation for the team to access this quote denied area in the basement. One big problem with this, everything that Emilio is trying to do wouldn’t be possible from inside the hoistway. It makes for a good movie but all these functions come from the elevator controller which is in the elevator machine room.

We know that this is an overhead traction elevator since we saw the counterweight in the pit before Emilio climbed up the rails. It’s a very good graphic of what this elevator system would look like in chapter four of elevators 101.

Before we move on to the rest of the scene, let’s talk about this building again. From the street level, we can see that it’s about four stories tall. If we include the basement level, that gives us a five-stop elevator. The first floor is about 30 feet high as we know. We can assume that this elevator has a rise of about 90 feet. We know that it’s a traction elevator already which means it’s almost definitely going to be a geared elevator machine with the machine in the overhead machine room. After we saw the counterweight, we know that this is a one-to-one cable arrangement. That means you would have cable terminations on top of the elevator cab, cables that go up and around the machine drive sheave in the machine room, and cable terminations on top of the counterweight.

At 12 minutes and 50 seconds in, Emilio gets caught between the elevator cab shell and the elevator wall. This is pretty accurate. You can see it’s a tight squeeze. Emilio’s lucky he’s on the counterweight side of the hoistway. With all the other equipment that would be on top of the elevator, there probably wouldn’t be enough space for him to squeeze in on the sides of the elevator cab. I am a little skeptical of why this elevator is moving so much since there’s a high security area but we’ll assume that there’s hall call demand coming from somewhere.

From the shot at the bottom of the elevator, we don’t see many devices on the bottom of the car. We would expect to see guide rollers, safeties, a traveling cable, perhaps elevator compensation even on a higher rise elevator. There’s some good images of these devices in chapter 8 of elevators 101. My biggest concern is that without seeing a traveling cable attached to the bottom of the elevator, there’s absolutely no way that this elevator is going to run.

Finally, I have an issue with the position of the car and the counterweight. If you visualize this hoistway, the counterweight is at the bottom when the car is at the top, so they pass each other pretty much right in the center of the hoistway. That means Emilio would probably be at least 50 feet above the pit floor. It’s evident from this scene so far that he probably didn’t climb up that high.

Another note here, this hoistway is extremely well lit. This is very uncommon. Elevator code does require 10 foot candles of lighting in the elevator pit, but generally none in the rest of the hoistway. I’ll tell you from experience, unless there’s a work light on top of the elevator, it’s not unusual for it to be pitch black in the hoistway, so Emilio got pretty lucky here.

Anyway, at 13 minutes and 17 seconds in, Emilio finally gets on top of the elevator. As he’s getting on top, we can see a ton of rail brackets spaced at around 12 inches each. That’s a crazy amount of brackets, because they aren’t really for anything but to secure the rails to the wall. It’s not uncommon to see brackets spaced 10 feet apart in this situation. The elevator and counterweight move perfectly up and down the rails, so there’s almost no lateral force on these brackets.

We also see a partial view of the car top, which is extremely barren. There’s almost nothing on this car top. There’s several graphics in Chapter 8 of Elevators 101 that show you how cramped it would be on a small elevator car top like this.

At around 14 minutes into the movie, we go to the elevator lobby on the first floor, where Tom Cruise and Kristen Scott Thomas are trying to gain access to the basement level. As they approach the hoistway doors, we can see that these are two-speed, right-handed, side-opening doors. This will be pretty important later.

Now, unfortunately, this elevator hall button has some problems. First, it’s obvious that the elevator services floors above and below this landing because the lantern points up and down, so the button would also have to be an intermediate fixture with both up and down buttons. Second, it doesn’t make sense to integrate the elevator button with security features. I’m not saying that it can’t be done, but the button would have to tie directly into the access control system and be compatible with the fixture specifications. For normal hall call access, the access control would almost always be tied directly into the existing hall buttons. I would rather see a fingerprint scanner next to the elevator call button so that access can be enabled that way. I also can’t imagine how hard it would be for an elevator mechanic to replace this button if it had a fingerprint scanner inside. This specialized button would also have to have some type of communication wire going to it, probably in the form of a cat5 or shielded wires. A normal elevator call button only has standard wires for voltage and no communication. Anyway, this is pretty moot because every elevator button is simply signals the elevator controller to do something. The smart move for the building is to scrap the hall call access and install a car call access for each floor. Car call access would be managed through the elevator controller in the elevator machine room, that way you can restrict who can access which floors from inside the elevator and not just in the hall.

After watching the scene again, I need to get on my soapbox for a second. When you push an elevator button, the only thing that happens is that you complete a circuit and send voltage to either a relay or a circuit board in the elevator controller. Once that voltage is provided, the task is done. Pushing the button 2, 3, 4, or 20 times is not going to get that job done any faster, so just push the button once and be patient.

At 14 minutes and 50 seconds, Emilio’s hard work hacks the access control and finally lets the other two agents into the elevator. Again, it would have been much easier for Emilio to tie directly into the elevator controller from the elevator machine room on the same level that Emilio climbed up from just a few minutes later. I’m not sure why he couldn’t just exit the hoistway at the basement level through the hoistway door and complete the mission all by himself.

Unfortunately for the filmmakers, the doors closed the wrong way. This isn’t the last time we’ll see this during this scene, but as designed, these right-handed doors would have to open from right to left instead of left to right as shown. Chapter 10 of Elevators 101 has some good diagrams of door arrangements, but the fast door in a two-speed arrangement is always closest to the hoistway.

Here’s another funny part of this scene. It’s kind of like what we discussed in episode 2. Emilio is looking down into the elevator cab at Tom Cruise. They’re making eye contact. This implies that there is no cab interior, no cab interior ceiling, or that the cab shell has some type of mesh canopy or top exit. This part likely wouldn’t be weight-bearing and could actually cause someone to fall through the top of the elevator. Also, if the elevator machines are geared, as they probably are in this case, there could be gear oil or other lubrication that dripped down the hoistway. With this type of cab ceiling, the liquids could fall directly into the elevator cab and potentially on top of passengers. All in all, not a great situation for the American Embassy. Finally, who in an elevator wants to be directly exposed to the sounds, smells, and other things inside the elevator hoistway?

At 15 minutes and 6 seconds, Tom Cruise and Kristen Scott Thomas enter the basement level and plant some surveillance devices. As they step out, we can see an extremely primitive car operating panel. I see only six buttons on this. Now, some older versions of elevators do have a minimum number of buttons on the COP, but it’s almost no way to have only six. Just the door open, door close, and stop switch make the total more than six. Add fire service and other buttons and we’re closer to 10 or 12. A Google image search for ‘elevator car operating panel’ can give you a very good perspective on what this might look like.

As they are about to leave, we can see another mismatch between the hall button and the hall lantern. This lantern is, again, an intermediate lantern showing both up and down directions. We know from previously watching the scene that this elevator doesn’t go below this landing, so it should be a terminal arrow that just points up. The hall button is a terminal button showing only one direction. The elevator departs the basement level and moves to the first floor.

We see that the target in this scene did place a hall call, which is probably why the elevator left the basement level. Emilio gets a little frantic here, but again, he probably should be in the elevator machine room and not on top of the elevator. He’d have just a lot more control up there.

This is where the scene starts getting pretty carried away. Tom Cruise radios John Voight to open the doors remotely so that he can escape through the elevator pit. As you might have guessed, this just can’t happen. On passenger elevators, the doors have no capability of opening themselves. They’re simply two sliding doors on a track with a spring closer that allows them to shut on their own. The door operator is mounted to the elevator cab and is the only means of power of opening the passenger hoistway doors. This scenario would actually require those doors to be motorized independently, which just wouldn’t happen, as we’ll see in a minute. There would be a motor physically mounted to the hoistway wall that is responsible for opening and closing the doors. Not really efficient when you have four other sets of doors to open. There’s a great image of a car door operator and other door equipment in Chapter 10 of Elevators 101. Even if that was possible, the next part of this scene is just as unbelievable.

At 16 and a half minutes, as the doors are opened manually by Tom Cruise’s boss, John Voight, we see Tom Cruise and Kristen Scott Thomas drop into the elevator pit as the elevator continues to move downward.

We’ve talked about this a couple of times already in previous episodes, but there is no scenario in normal operation where the elevator continues to move after the hoistway doors are open. This is the whole safety chain concept that keeps the elevator from moving when there is potentially unsafe situation. That could be any number of switches in the elevator, the hoistway, or on top of the elevator. The whole purpose of the safety chain is to prevent the elevator from running if someone is inside the hoistway. There’s a very good graphic of an elevator interlock and its components in Chapter 10 of Elevators 101.

We can also see that there is no toe guard on this elevator. A toe guard is a piece of metal attached to the elevator car sill that extends at least 24 inches down. Chapter 8 of Elevators 101 has a diagram of it. Without a toe guard, there’s a lot of danger that something or someone could fall down the hoistway when the elevator is leveled above the floor. But luckily for Tom and Kristen, there was no toe guard or they wouldn’t have gotten out of this basement floor.

At 18 minutes and 47 seconds, whatever remained of a plausible elevator scene goes away. The elevator begins moving upward and Emilio apparently can’t control it. Again, not surprisingly.

The view of the car top shows the cables shaking pretty significantly. First, there’s almost no purpose in all of these cables based on what we’ve already seen so far. Remember, there were two cables on the counterweight at the beginning. Also, remember, there are literally thousands of pounds hanging on each end of each cable. Cables just don’t move this much.

At 1856, 32 spikes deploy from the overhead of the hoistway. This is actually laughable. First, I’m very interested to hear the purpose of these spikes. Second, I have an issue with Emilio actually hitting them, even if they were there. As we discussed in episode 2, the hoistway dimensions are finite and the counterweight can only go so far into the pit. We saw the counterweight at the beginning of the mission, so I’m already skeptical that the car just can’t go this high in the hoistway. Emilio should be fine and not impaled on top of an elevator in the Czech Republic.

Finally, at 19 minutes and 24 seconds, our target exits the denied area through the hoistway door and into the elevator pit. This is a good shot of the inside of the hoistway doors in this scene. You can see that the door has essentially nothing attached to it and pretty much no means of even opening. Every device from a standard hoistway door is missing. There are no locks, no coupling devices, no gibs, no sight guard, no fascia, not even an escutcheon hole for a locking device. It makes me wonder how he was even able to open the door in the first place. But he enters the pit and escapes to the outside.

And that is all we have for episode three. If you’ve already listened to the first two episodes, I hope you’re enjoying everything. If you haven’t listened to the first two episodes, I recommend you check them out. Thank you so much for listening.

I appreciate all of your support from all of you who have listened and left me reviews. If you haven’t, please write a review and even let me know your favorite scene that you’d like to discuss. As always, Elevators Uncut has three standard rules for content.

Rule one, we don’t use any proprietary or confidential information. Rule two, we only use fictional elevator scenes from movies, shows, or books. Rule three, all analysis is my opinion and does not constitute the opinion of any corporate body or entity. Our goal remains to provide a technical based analysis of fictional scenes in an effort to provide a more accurate elevator perspective for all of you. This episode was written, produced, and narrated by Joe Caperna.”

References used during Episode 3:

De Palma, B. (Director). (1996). Mission: Impossible [Film]. Paramount Pictures.

IMDb. (n.d.). Mission: Impossible (1996) – IMDb. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117060/

Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Embassy of the United States, Prague. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassy_of_the_United_States%2C_Prague

U.S. Embassy in The Czech Republic. (n.d.). U.S. Embassy Prague. U.S. Department of State. https://cz.usembassy.gov/

McCain, Z. (2005). Elevators 101. Elevator World Educational Fund.

American Society of Mechanical Engineers. (2019). ASME A17.1/CSA B44: Safety code for elevators and escalators. ASME.

Omni Calculator. (n.d.). Physics calculators. Omni Calculator. Retrieved April 4, 2024, from https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics

Just a few of the many links to this episode online:

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Commentary: This was the first episode that I came up with. I wanted to do a good introduction into the topic of elevators. I had never done a podcast before, so there were a lot of details to figure out. I had to do a lot of writing, and learn about multiple different software platforms. Even after learning everything and putting together the episode, I still didn’t know how it would turn out. As an avid podcast listener myself, I wasn’t sure if the sound would come out the way I envisioned. I also wasn’t sure if I was talking too fast or too slow. This podcast had been on my mind for a couple of years, so I was excited and anxious to get it started.

Episode Transcript: Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai

“Welcome to Elevators Uncut and welcome to our very first episode.

I’m your host Joe Caperna. I’ve been wanting to publish this for a while so thank you for stopping by and I hope you enjoy the show. Since this is our first episode there’s a few things that I’d like to explain before we get started.

First, I won’t be using any real-life events when we discuss elevator content. This show is meant to be based on fictional events connected to real life elevator capabilities and limitations. Second, I won’t be using any private or proprietary information. All of the content will be based on open-source information and referenced in the show notes. Third, all content is my personal view and it’s not the view of any specific authority or entity. Now that we’re done with the formalities let’s get into the reason that we’re all here.

I’ve been working in the elevator industry for almost 10 years. I’ve also served in the military as an army engineer officer. I’m a certified Project Management Professional and I currently manage elevator modernization projects for a publicly traded elevator company.

During my time in the elevator industry I’ve noticed that many non-industry people I talk to don’t have a experience with the technical side of elevators. In fact, most people I talk to get the majority of their information from television or movies. Now, I’m a big fan of tv shows and movies and one of the things I noticed is that people get very interested when discussing elevator scenes and movies or shows. Particularly when we discuss whether the scene could or could not happen in real life. I’m normally pretty outspoken and stick to my opinion that inside the elevator is the safest place you can be. There is a lot more danger trying to evacuate an elevator than there is waiting for the professionals to arrive. And those conversations are the reason that we’re here today. My intent is that during every episode we discuss at least one fictional television or movie scene that features an elevator and we also discuss why it likely could or could not happen. Since this is our first episode I’d like to start with a reading. This particular reading is from the book Elevator Pitch by Linwood Barclay. I put a link to this book on Amazon in the show notes if you’d like to check it out. I’m going to read an excerpt from the book jacket as well as an excerpt from the story itself. So without further ado here we go:

‘It all begins on a Monday when four people board an elevator in a Manhattan office tower. Each presses a button for their floor but the elevator proceeds non-stop to the top. Once there it pauses for a few seconds but the doors don’t open. Instead the elevator begins to descend floor by floor then it plummets right to the bottom of the shaft. It appears to be a random accident the kind that seems to happen all too often in a city like New York. Crane collapse, subway fire, elevator malfunction. But on Tuesday it happens again in a different Manhattan skyscraper and then Wednesday brings yet another tragic high-rise catastrophe. In only three days one of the most vertical cities in the world and the nation’s capital of media finance and entertainment is plunged into chaos.

Clearly this is anything but random. This is a cold calculated bid to terrorize the city and it’s working. Fearing for their lives thousands of people who work in high rises across the city refuse to leave their homes. Commerce is slowed to a to a trickle. Emergency calls to top floors of apartments and towers go unanswered. The mayor already embroiled in a growing scandal is desperate for answers.

Who is behind this? Why are they doing it? Are these deadly acts of sabotage somehow connected to a fingerless body found on the high line? Two seasoned New York detectives and a straight shooting journalist race against time to uncover the truth before the city’s newest and tallest residential tower has its ribbon cutting on Friday night. This is a very interesting topic for me. As someone from the elevator industry I take interest in how the general public and passengers respond to incidents involving elevators.’

I’ve seen various levels of elevator shutdowns in different cities that I’ve worked. Even without catastrophic levels of events my perception is that the public is generally scared and anxious about being involved in an elevator incident. It’s interesting to think about what would happen in the public at large if incidents like these were more frequent or somehow deliberate.

So let’s get in to the topic a little deeper by reading an excerpt from chapter one. This starts on page six:

‘The elevator door is closed. Sherry press 33, sneaker girl 34, and business guy 37. When Stewart did not reach over and press one of the many buttons the man who was standing closest to the panel glanced his way slightly offering to press a button for him. I’m good, he said.

The elevator silently began its ascent. Sherry and the other woman looked up to catch the latest news. The elevator was fitted with a small video screen that ran kind of like a Chiron, a line of headlines moving from right to left.

New York forecast high 64, low 51, mostly sunny. Stewart moved forward half a step so he was almost rubbing shoulders with Sherry. How are you doing today Miss D’Agostino? She turned her head from reading the screen and said, fine, thank you. And then she knew who it was. Her eyes flickered with fear. Her body leaned away from him, but her feet were rooted to the same spot on the elevator floor.

Stewart held out the FedEx package. I wanted to give you this. That’s all. I just wanted you to have it. I told you to stay away from me, she said, not accepting it. The man and woman turned their heads. It’s cool, Stewart said, smiling at them. Everything’s fine. He kept holding out the package to Sherry.

Take it, you’ll love it. I’m sorry, you have to. Okay, okay, wait. Let me just tell you about it then. Once you hear about it, I guarantee you’ll like to read it. The elevator made a soft whirring noise and sped past the first 20 floors.

Sherry glanced at the numbers flashing on the display above the door, then read up to the news line. Latest unemployment figures show rate fell 0.2% last month. She sighed, resistance fading.

You’ve got 15 seconds, she said. If you follow me off, I’ll call security. Stewart beamed.

Okay, right. So you’ve got this guy. He’s like 30 and he works 10 seconds, she said.

Sum it up in one sentence. Stewart suddenly looked panicked. He blinked a couple of times, his mind racing to encapsulate the brilliant script into a phrase to distill it into its essence.

Um, he said, five seconds, Sherry said. The elevator almost to the 33rd floor. Guy works at a factory that makes clocks, but one of them is actually a time machine, he blurted.

He let out a long breath, then took one in. That’s it, she said. No, he said. There’s more, but to try to explain it in what the hell, Sherry said, but not to him. The elevator had not stopped at her floor. It shot right past 33 and then glided right on by the 34th.

Crap, said sneaker girl. That’s me. The two women reached out to the panel at the same time to press the button for their floors again.

Their fingers engaged a bit of fencing. Sorry, said Sherry, who’d managed to hit the button for her floor first. She edged out of the way.

U.S. militant group flyovers, prime suspect in Seattle coffee shop bombing that killed two. As the elevator continued its ascent, business guy grimaced and said, guess I’ll join the club. He put his index finger to the 37 button.

Someone at the top must have pushed for it, sneaker girl said. It’s going all the way up first. She turned out to be right. The elevator did not stop until it reached the 40th floor. But the doors did not open. God, I effing hate elevators, she said.

Stewart did not share her distress. He grinned. The elevator malfunctioned and brought him a few extra seconds to make his pitch to Sherry.

I know time travel has been done a lot, but this scenario is different. My hero, he doesn’t go all the way into the past. He can only go five minutes one way or the other. So business guy said, I’ll walk back down. He pressed the button to open the doors, but there was no response. Jesus, he murdered.

Sherry said we should call someone. She pointed to the button marked with the symbol for a phone. It’s only been a few seconds, Stewart said.

It’ll probably sort itself out after a minute or two. And with a slight jolt, the elevator started moving again. Finally, sneaker girl said.

Storm UK approaching hurricane status. The interesting angle is, Stewart said persistently, if he can only go five minutes into the past or five minutes into the future, how does he use that? Is it kind of superpower? What kind of advantages could that give someone? Sherry glanced at him dismissively. I’d have gotten on this elevator five minutes before you showed up.

Stewart bristled at that. You don’t have to insult me. The descending elevator gone past another floor.

The man jabbed at 37 again, more angrily this time. The elevator sailed past floors as two women as well, but stopped at 29. Oh, come on, business guy said.

This is ridiculous. He pressed the phone button. He waited for a moment, expecting a response.

Hello, he said. Anyone there? Hello. This is freaking me out, sneaker girl said, taking a cell phone from her purse.

She tapped the screen, put the phone to her ear. Yeah. Hey, Steve, it’s Paula. I’m going to be late. I’m stuck in the effing Ella. And there was a loud noise from above, as though the world’s largest rubber band had snapped.

The elevator trembled for a second. Everyone looked up, stunned. Even Stewart, who had stopped trying to sell his idea to Sherry Agostino.

Crap, said sneaker girl. What the hell was that, Sherry asked. Almost instinctively, everyone started backing up toward the walls of the elevator, leaving the center open.

They gripped the waist high brass handrails. It’s probably nothing, Stewart said. A glitch, that’s all.

Hello, business guy said again. Is anybody there? For Christ’s sake, this elevator’s gone nuts. Sherry spotted the alarm button and pressed it. There was only silence. Shouldn’t we have been hearing that? She asked. The man said, maybe it rings someplace else, you know, so someone will come down at security desk, probably.

For several seconds, no one said anything. It was dead silent in the elevator. Everyone took a few calming breaths. Your life expectancy is now nearly 80. Stewart spoke first. Someone someone will be along.

He nodded with false confidence and gave Sherry a nervous smile. Maybe this is what I should be writing up. The elevator began to plunge.

Within seconds is going much faster than it was designed to go. Stewart and Sherry and the two others felt their feet lifting off the floor. The elevator was in free fall until it hit bottom.’

Now, if this is a subject that interests you, I strongly recommend that you start with Zach McCain’s book, Elevators 101. It’s the book that’s recommended to us when we start in the industry, and I think it’s a great spot to get some foundational knowledge. We’re definitely going to reference that book when we discuss these fictional scenes, so it would help you kind of understand the terminology and what things we’re talking about.

It’s about 130 pages. It covers all major parts of elevators and some escalators. This is also a good place to become familiar with a lot of the elevator terminology that I’m going to use in this podcast and in future episodes.

I’ll put a link to the book in the show notes for you. So let’s get started with the analysis of this scene from Elevator Pitch, and we’re going to do this like we do for every episode of this podcast and every scene that we analyzed. The objective is to describe generally what happened in the scene from an elevator perspective, then discuss why or why not it could potentially have happened like that.

To do this we’ll have to make some general assumptions about the equipment and the general speed of the equipment and heights of the buildings and some other general parameters. So in this scene there are several passengers in the elevator. They’re all going to different floors, the highest floor being the 37th floor.

From this information we can assume it’s a high-rise building with a rise of at least 450 feet. That’s assuming an average floor height of about 12 feet for the 37 floors. For this size building we will also assume an elevator speed of about 800 feet per minute. Could be faster, but 800 is a safe assumption. This could probably be up to a thousand feet per minute, but not more than that. Keep in mind that 800 feet per minute seems fast, but it’s barely more than nine miles an hour. Of course nine miles per hour in an elevator shaft looks and feels a lot faster than it is out in the open. So these four characters are traveling up the elevator hoistway trying to stop at four separate floors. The book says that the elevator bypasses all the floors despite the car call that was entered by each passenger.

This is our first clue. From inside the elevator you would see the car call remaining lit on the car operating panel until it reached the floor. Eliminating any elevator monitoring systems that might be in place of this building, the only place to eliminate a car call is from the elevator controller in the elevator machine room. There’s a good diagram of an elevator system in chapter four of elevators 101, but there’s also plenty of online photos or graphics if you do a search. Getting back to the story, the elevator is bypassing floors in the up direction and isn’t stopping at any of these floors. We can assume it means that there are no hall calls being placed in the system with people waiting to go up on the same elevator, or any hall calls that have canceled. If there was, for example, someone waiting to go up on floor 21, we would assume that the elevator would stop at the 21st floor and pick that person up to continue up to a higher floor. Again, to cancel any hall calls that there might be, it’s likely done from the elevator controller somehow. After bypassing the floors, the elevator reaches the top landing. We’ll assume that it’s the top landing because if the elevator were to go into the overhead of the hoistway, it would hit the top final limit switch and shut itself down. It’s also possible that the counterweight would hit the buffer in the elevator pit and also shut the elevator down. Once these mechanical switches are activated, there is no way to electronically reset the elevator, so we’ll assume that the elevator didn’t trigger any of these limit switches and is just sitting at the top landing of the hoistway.

With the elevator at the top landing, we’ll assume that the elevator driving machine is gearless due to the rise of the building. There’s a good image of a gearless machine in chapter 5 of elevators 101. Then the elevator began to plunge and go much faster than it was designed to go, per the author.

Now there’s a difference between design and rating. Generally the elevator is designed to go for any number of different speeds above and beyond the normal operating speed, but there’s specific constraints as to why the rated speed is what it is, particularly the height of the elevator pit in the overhead. In this case we’ll say that the elevator is moving in the down direction faster than its rated speed of 800 feet per minute, which is our assumption from earlier. We’ll also say that the elevator is truly free-falling and is subject to the normal force of gravity. I found a free calculator online called Omni Calculator that did the calculation for me. After half a second the elevator would be falling at 10 miles per hour, which would also start the overspeed response on the elevator governor.

This is where we take a break from the story for a second because elevator governors are going to probably be the most popular topic for every episode we do. The elevator governor or speed governor is what makes it so that the elevator can’t exceed a certain speed in the down direction. That certain speed is the rating for that elevator.

Chapter seven in elevators 101 has several different photos and descriptions of governors and how they function. Basically, there are two switches on the governor that we need to keep in mind. The electronic switch is the first switch to engage during an overspeed situation. The electronic switch disables the power to the elevator machine, which prevents the machine from running. The second switch is a mechanical switch, which activates a jaw or similar device that clamps down on the governor cable. This mechanical switch would only be activated if the electronic switch did not stop the elevator from exceeding speed in the down direction. When the mechanical switch is activated, the jaws clamp down on the cable. The cable pulls on a safety rod that is connected to the safeties on the elevator itself. Now the safety rod deploys the elevator safeties which set into the guide rails alongside of the elevator cab. Traditional wedge safeties make it impossible for the elevator to fall after they’re deployed. They kind of wedge themselves between the safety frame and the guide rails inside the hoistway. The only way to disengage these wedge safeties is to move the elevator into the up direction and reset them.

There’s actually several examples of safeties with graphics in chapter nine of elevators 101. Now I’m sure you’re saying, but what if the governor cable was cut or the governor was broken? Well, the beauty of an elevator governor is that the cable has to have tension on it at all times. As soon as you remove tension, the safety is deployed. Sometimes we even have issues with safeties partially deploying and scraping the guide rail because there’s the governor cable is stretched or there isn’t enough tension on it. Now the safeties are at the bottom of the elevator and attached to the elevator frame itself. So in order to do anything to the safeties, you’d actually have to be underneath the elevator within reach of the bottom of the frame.

There might be a couple of you saying, what about the Tower of Terror in Disney? Well, ignoring the fact that’s a ride and not connected to safety requirements of a normal elevator, the design of that traction is extremely technical and has essentially two separate elevators running the car pulling in opposite directions. Getting back to our story, the elevator would fall approximately four and a half feet before the governor overspeed switch tripped. That’s the electronic switch.

The mechanical switch would trip shortly after and deploy the safeties. Due to the weight of the elevator, it would slide another 18 inches or so once the safety is deployed. So even tripling the distance would make the total travel about 12 feet before the safety stopped the elevator in the down direction.

So let’s explore another scenario for the skeptics out there. Let’s say that the perpetrator in this story was able to run the elevator in the down direction and keep the speed under the rated speed. So in this case, the elevator would run down about nine miles per hour in the down direction from the 37th floor.

Using another calculator that I found online from calculator soup.com, it would take about 34 seconds to run down from the 37th floor without stopping. Again, this would assume that the perpetrator was able to eliminate all the hall calls in the down direction from the elevator lobbies so that no one could stop the elevator and get on. So two things will happen when the elevator passes the bottom landing at nine miles per hour.

The first thing is that the elevator will trip the terminal slowdown switch inside the elevator shaft. This ensures that the elevator doesn’t go beyond the farthest point in the shaft. At this point, the elevator can’t travel any farther.

Also at this point, the elevator counterweight is at the top of the hoistway and will also have some space restrictions where it can’t go any farther. As the elevator passes the bottom limit switches, power will shut down and slow the elevator before it hits the elevator buffer that’s in the pit. Since we agreed that the elevator can’t exceed the rated speed, the limit switches would shut the elevator down using the elevator power and prevent it from continuing down the hoistway.

There would be a short amount of time where the elevator would glide to a stop before the machine brake sets, but at the rated speed it would only be about a half second or so. And if the limit switches didn’t cut power to the elevator, this elevator would also have an oil filled buffer at the bottom of the elevator pit that’s designed to absorb any impact from the ascending elevator. So under normal speed, there would be no issue.

For the other skeptics out there saying, how do you know all of these devices would work? That’s a reasonable question. However, at least in the United States, in the elevator industry, the test requirements are very strict. So depending on the state that you’re in, there may be a different code year that has been adopted statewide.

In New York, they’re usually up to a very, very current date. But for the most part, even the oldest codes are fairly strict. Chapter three from elevators 101 has a good summary of a 17.1 safety code for elevators.

But in short, every safety system on a traction elevator like this one in the book would be tested at a minimum of five years with full capacity of test weights. All the safety switches would be tested as well as the car safeties themselves, the buffer switches, and all the safety circuits on the elevator. Some jurisdictions even require an annual safety test without the full weight in addition to the five year requirement.

And that, my friends, is all we have for this first episode of Elevators Uncut. Rest assured, though, I’m working diligently on more episodes, and I have some great ideas on different scenes and movies and shows that we can discuss. So until then, try to relax.

Thank you so much for listening. This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and it means a lot to me to have it become a reality. If you enjoyed the episode and you’re asking yourself, how do I hear more episodes? Well, the most helpful thing you can do to make that happen is leave a rating and review for this podcast.”

References used during Episode 1:

Barclay, L. (2019). Elevator pitch: A novel. William Morrow.

McCain, Z. (2005). Elevators 101. Elevator World Educational Fund.

American Society of Mechanical Engineers. (2019). ASME A17.1/CSA B44: Safety code for elevators and escalators. ASME.

Omni Calculator. (n.d.). Physics calculators. Omni Calculator. Retrieved April 4, 2024, from https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics

Furey, E. (n.d.). Calculator Soup – Online calculators. Calculator Soup. Retrieved April 4, 2024, from https://www.calculatorsoup.com/

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