Quiz: All About Elevators

Believe it or not, elevators have had their ups and downs. Once viewed as expensive novelties and dangerous contraptions, early elevators struggled to gain public trust. That changed in 1854, when an inventor stunned a New York crowd by cutting an elevator cable with an ax to demonstrate how his safety brake could stop the platform mid-fall.

Call them ascending rooms, lifts, or whatever you please; from steam power to hydraulics to electric traction, the journey of the elevator played a big part in reshaping cities by making it practical to build higher and higher. Test your knowledge of one of engineering’s most transformative machines with this ASME quiz.