????9. 奧的斯電梯公司

????1854年，數(shù)百人齊聚紐約世博會（World’s Fair）中心由鋼和玻璃建成的水晶宮展廳（Crystal Palace），觀看艾利莎?奧的斯的驚險表演。他站在四層樓高的平臺上，僅靠一根繃緊的繩索將自己吊起。在向他的助手示意之前，奧的斯度過了激動人心的時刻。他憑借繩索在空中盤旋，而一把張開的劍把繩索一分為二。觀眾隨之倒吸了一口冷氣。平臺震動起來，但是并未墜落。因為一組隱藏的彈簧片與護欄相嚙合，奇跡般地固定住了奧的斯的“安全電梯”。吸引觀眾的竅門要歸功于P.T巴納姆。在整整一個月的時間里，他聘用奧的斯每天多次表演這一特技。而這個改變世界的發(fā)明要歸功于奧的斯。1853年，他在紐約楊克斯一個破產(chǎn)的彈簧床墊工廠創(chuàng)辦了奧的斯電梯公司（Otis Elevator Company）。安全電梯使建筑高度不斷增加：從位于紐約的20層熨斗大廈（Flatiron Building，1902年安裝奧的斯電梯）、到10年后的60層伍爾沃斯大廈（Woolworth Building）、再到1931年的103層帝國大廈（Empire State Building）。正是憑借這種快速可靠的客梯和貨梯，使高層辦公大廈和城市天際線能夠正常運轉(zhuǎn)，使高樓大廈和頂層公寓成為身份的象征，使尷尬的電梯對話成為億萬人的每日通勤儀式。后來，鋼索取代了纖維纜索。電子按鈕在很大程度上取代了人工操作員。但是，今天的安全電梯與160年前令世界博覽會觀眾喝彩的電梯幾乎毫無二致。在此期間，現(xiàn)隸屬于聯(lián)合技術(shù)公司（United Technologies UTX -0.70% ）的奧的斯電梯公司仍然在主導(dǎo)著它所開創(chuàng)的電梯行業(yè)。—Clifton Leaf

????9. Otis Elevator

????The year is 1854. Hundreds gather in the New York Crystal Palace, the iron-and-glass exhibition hall at the center of the World’s Fair, to watch a man standing on a platform four stories high, suspended by a single taut rope. A few electrifying moments pass before Elisha Otis signals his assistant, hovering by the rope with an outstretched sword, to sever the cable in two. The crowd gasps. The platform jolts—but doesn’t fall, as a pair of hidden leaf springs engage the rails, keeping Otis’s “safety elevator” miraculously in place. Credit the showmanship to P.T. Barnum, who hired Otis to perform this stunt several times a day for a whole month. Credit the world-changing invention to Otis, who founded his elevator company in an old Yonkers, N.Y., bedstead factory the year before. The safety elevator made it possible for buildings to climb ever skyward—from the 20-story Flatiron Building in New York (equipped with Otis elevators in 1902) to the nearly 60-story Woolworth Building a decade later, to the 103-story Empire State Building in 1931. It was this fast, reliable people-and-freight mover that made possible the office tower and the city skyline, that made high-rises and penthouses symbols of status, that made awkward elevator talk a daily rite of passage for hundreds of millions of souls. Fiber rope shifted to steel cables. Electronic buttons have largely replaced flesh-and-blood operators. But the safety elevator of today is much the same as the one that wowed the World’s Fair audience 16 decades ago. And for all that time, the Otis Elevator Company, now part of United Technologies UTX -0.70% , has dominated the industry it created. —Clifton Leaf