An escalator is a Conveyor transport device to Transport people, consisting of a staircase whose steps move up or down on tracks which keep the surfaces of the individual steps horizontal.
A moving walkway, moving sidewalk, travelator, or travellator is a slow speed Conveyor belt to Transport people horizontally or on an incline similar to an escalator. In both cases, riders can walk or stand. They are often applied in pairs, one for each direction.
Most escalators nowadays require people to move on and off in the same direction the steps are moving. At Earls Court, London, UK, the first escalator installed on the London Underground required people to move on and off from the side of steps at each end of their journey.
Most escalators have moving handrails which approximately keep pace with the movement of the steps. The direction of movement (up or down) can be permanently the same, or be controlled by personnel according to the time of day, or automatically be controlled by whomever arrives first, someone at the bottom or at the top (of course the system is programmed such that the direction is not reversed while somebody is on the escalator). In the last two cases there has to be an alternative nearby.
Moving walkways are often used in airports where there is a long distance to walk between terminals and in metro stations.
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Using the high-speed walkway is like using any other moving walkway, except that for safety there are special procedures to follow when joining or leaving. Staff (seen here in yellow jackets) determine who can use it as riders must have at least one hand free to hold the handrail. Those carrying bags, shopping, etc. or who are infirm must use the ordinary walkway nearby.
On entering, there is a 10 m Acceleration zone where the 'ground' is a series of metal rollers. Riders must stand still with both feet on these rollers and use one hand to hold the handrail and let it pull them so that they glide over the rollers. The idea is to accelerate the riders so that they will be travelling fast enough to step onto the moving walkway belt.
Once on the walkway, riders can stand or walk; there is no special sensation of travelling at speed.
At the exit, there is a deceleration zone where again riders must stand still and let the handrail pull them as they slow down, again while gliding over metal rollers. Then they just walk off.Modern escalators have metal steps in a continuous loop that move on tracks. Escalators are typically used in pairs with one going up and the other going down. Some modern escalators in stores and shopping malls have glass sides which allow their workings to be viewed. Although most escalators are straight, some shopping malls use curved versions.
Most escalators nowadays require people to move on and off in the same direction the steps are moving. At Earls Court, London, UK, the first escalator installed on the London Underground required people to move on and off from the side of steps at each end of their journey.
Most escalators have moving handrails which approximately keep pace with the movement of the steps. The direction of movement (up or down) can be permanently the same, or be controlled by personnel according to the time of day, or automatically be controlled by whomever arrives first, someone at the bottom or at the top (of course the system is programmed such that the direction is not reversed while somebody is on the escalator). In the last two cases there has to be an alternative nearby.
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Mitsubishi Electric Corporation has developed and manufactured curved and spiral escalators since the 1980s.
One notable set of spiral escalators is at the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Times Square shopping mall in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong also features four curved escalators, as does Wheelock Place in Singapore.
Jesse W. Reno invented the first escalator and installed it as an amusement ride at Coney Island, New York in 1897. Charles Seeberger further developed it and joined the Otis Elevator Company in 1899, and together they produced the first commercial escalator which won a first prize at the Paris 1900 Exposition Universelle in France. The Otis escalator was modeled after Mr. Seeberger's invention. The company later combined the best aspects of both the Reno and Seeberger inventions and in 1921 produced an escalator of the type used today. These improvements in design brought the escalator into extensive use in department stores and banks and in metropolitan railroad and subway stations.
The German company Orenstein & Koppel (O&K), would also become a major player in escalator design and manufacture.
Escalators in the London Underground once had wooden steps, but this was changed after the fire at King's Cross St. Pancras tube station in 1987. Old escalators with wooden steps are still in use in some places, however, such as the Tyne Cyclist and Pedestrian Tunnel in Tyne and Wear, England and the Macy's department store in New York City.
A mnemonic for the U.S./British convention on this point is that stand and right each have five letters, while walk and left have four.
There have been various reports of people actually falling off a moving escalator or getting their shoe stuck in part of the escalator. A few fatal accidents are known to have involved escalators and travelators: Sally Baldwin, a professor of the University of York was crushed to death at Tiburtina Station in Rome on 28 October 2003 after a travelator collapsed and she was pulled into the cogwheels.
In another incident, on June 15, 2002, Andrea Albright, a 24-year-old JC Penney employee in the Mall in Columbia (Columbia, Maryland), was critically injured while riding the store's escalator from the first to the second level. She somehow got her head caught between the escalator rail and a low ceiling. Albright died 10 days later of massive injuries to the Brain from lack of Oxygen. In 2005, her parents sued the property manager, two design firms, and the escalator company for $5 million.
Francisco Portillo, a Salvadorian man living in Boston died after getting his hood stuck in an MBTA escalator on 21 February, 2005.
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The longest escalator in the Western Hemisphere is at the Wheaton station of the Washington Metro subway system. It is 155m (508ft) long, and takes almost 3 and a half minutes to ascend or descend without walking. It replaced what was formerly the longest escalator in the Western Hemisphere, which is also located on the Washington Metro system at the Bethesda station.
The longest escalator on earth is a four-section outdoor escalator at Ocean Park, Hong Kong, with an overall length of 224m (745ft) feet.
However, the metro systems in several cities in Eastern Europe (including St. Petersburg, Kyiv and Prague) have Soviet-era escalators up to approximately 100m (330ft) long. Those at the Náměstí Míru station in Prague were rebuilt to the same length in 1998-9 by ThyssenKrupp.
The Verb form of the word is (to) escalate and is commonly applied to the use of increased force in warfare as Escalation.