SPEEDWALKS, TRAV-O-LATORS AND GLIDE-RIDES: PASSENGER CONVEYORS IN THE 1950S

摘要

Elevator world has always provided its readers with up-to-date information on the newest innovations in the short-range transportation industry. In the late 1950s, EW published a series of articles on one of those new innovations: passenger corvyeyors. Known more commonly to the traveling public as moving sidewalks, this technology is a familiar feature of many contemporary American airports. It has become as ubiquitous as the department store escalator, and its use is almost a "non-event" for many riders. However, in the 1950s, moving sidewalks were presented and perceived as technological wonders that had the potential to dramatically impact architecture. Although moving sidewalks were first introduced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (the subject of a future article), the machines built by Hewitt-Robbins, Stephens-Adamson, Otis, Goodyear and others were clearly seen as part of a new chapter in the history of this transportation system. This chapter begins in 1951 with the installation of a rubber-belt passenger conveyor in the Goodyear Tire Plant in Akron, Ohio. Designed and built by the Stephens-Adamson Manufacturing Co., the new system, named the Speedwalk, represented the successful culmination of work begun in the late 1940s. The following year, Stephens-Adamson installed a Speedwalk in the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. This 19.8-meter conveyor was part of an exhibition of products produced by the B.F. Goodrich Co.