The Reno Circular 'Escalator'

[CSLR]

Various discussions and comments about this device have been made across two other threads in this forum. I am now drawing these together here and placing them in some sort of order to make everything more accessible and to allow us to continue the discussion.




This is a photograph of part of the remains of the Reno Circular 'escalator' at Holloway Road shortly before sections were removed by LTM. These preserved sections are currently displayed at Acton Depot. Reno's device is often referred to as a staircase, but was in reality a rotating walkway - although anyone stupid enough to try to walk on it while it was in motion should be considered brain-dead. My advice would have been to hold on for dear life.
A device of a similar design was exhibited at Earls Court as a fairground ride and appears to have worked quite well in that capacity. Subsequently Reno tried to fit one into a working environment at Holloway Road station. This particular incarnation was not ready when the GNP&B was visited by the Board of Trade and it was never officially inspected by them. The indications are that it was not owned by the railway and was installed purely as a demonstration unit. It may (possibly) have been operated for officials of the company, but it almost certainly never carried the general public.
Having inspected it in situ and having seen contemporary sketches, I would explain the principle as follows:-
Imagine a helix that has the appearance of a rising spiral path and which follows a line similar to that of a circular staircase up the inner edge of a large vertical tube. As this path reaches the top its position moves away from the inner edge of the tube by an amount that must be greater than the width of the path. After passing the highest point it continues to spiral in the same direction but now moving downwards - it is now positioned inside the first spiral. At the bottom of the shaft, the inner path drifts across to the wall of the shaft and joins onto the rising spiral path that I described at the start of this paragraph.
The whole therefore forms one continuous loop with the path surface always remaining face upwards. This is unlike a conventional escalator where the surface is inverted in order to return it to the start of its travel.
The drive was just as incredible, with movement being provided by spindles that radiated from a driveshaft that ran down the centre of the shaft.


On 9 December 2006 at 17:06 Oracle wrote:

.. the escalator began as an amusement and not as a practical transport. The first patent relating to an escalator-like machine was granted in 1859 to a Massachusetts man for a steam driven unit. On March 15 1892, Jesse Reno patented his moving stairs or inclined elevator as he called it. In 1895, Jesse Reno created a new novelty ride at Coney Island from his patented design, a moving stairway that elevated passengers on a conveyor belt at a 25 degree angle.

Escalator = Scala Elevator
The escalator as we know it was later re-designed by Charles Seeberger in 1897, who created the name 'escalator' from the word 'scala', which is Latin for steps and the word 'elevator', which had already been invented.

Charles Seeberger, together with the Otis Elevator Company produced the first commercial escalator in 1899 at the Otis factory in Yonkers, N.Y. The Seeberger-Otis wooden escalator won first prize at the Paris 1900 Exposition Universelle in France. Jesse Reno's Coney Island ride success briefly made Jesse Reno into "the" escalator designer and he founded the Reno Electric Stairways and Conveyors company in 1902.

Charles Seeberger sold his patent rights for the escalator to the Otis Elevator Company in 1910, who also bought Jesse Reno's escalator patent in 1911. Otis then came to dominate escalator production, and combined and improved the various designs of escalators.

According to Otis, "In the 1920s, Otis engineers, led by David Lindquist, combined and improved the Jesse Reno and Charles Seeberger escalator designs, and created the cleated, level steps of the modern escalator in use today. Over the years, Otis dominated the escalator business, but lost the product's trademark. The word escalator lost its proprietary status and its capital "e" in 1950 when the U.S. Patent Office ruled that the word "escalator" had become just a common descriptive term for moving stairways


Source: inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blescalator.htm

It seemes Jesse Wilford Reno was a prolific inventor and patented numerous "lifting" devices. Here is is his 1899 Patent on escalators:

v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=GB189914813&F=0

then 1901:
v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=GB190023311&F=0

then 1902:
v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=GB190209188&F=0

and 1904, which seems to suggest how the spiral one worked, by the design:
v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=GB190400185&F=0

and 1906:
v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=GB190517876&F=0

and finally 1907:
v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=GB190700229&F=0

However Charles David Seeberger seems to have patented the spiral escalator. This is all I could find for the moment:
v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=AT2031B&F=0&QPN=AT2031B

On 9 December 2006 at 18:44 tubeprune wrote:

I found this:

www.theelevatormuseum.org/f/f_4.htm

It seems to show a drawing of the Holloway Road installation.

On 9 December 2006 at 19:07 Ben wrote:

Fascinating. One wonders whether had the spiral technology caught on lift shafts would have been expanded slightly and turned into escalator shafts. This meaning that numerous station buildings would not have been abandoned.

On 9 Dec 2006 at 22:39 compsci wrote:

Regarding additional photographs of the escalator/thing/deathtrap, the museum has a number of photographs taken at the time they removed what remained of it. They are currently in the process of being catalogued (a process started when I removed them from a dusty box last Thursday), and should be listed in the database shortly. It may be possible to arrange for them to be scanned.

What remains of it, specifically the last few feet of track which can be seen in the photograph, can now be seen in the Depot at Acton.

I will post another photograph and some further comments on the operation of this device later today.

[CSLR]

This is another photograph of part of the Reno Circular 'Escalator, taken when it was still in place at Holloway Road.
You can get an idea from this of just how narrow it was. During the inspection, I saw no indications that side protection or handrails had ever been fitted. Along with the fact that it was never approved for public service, this serves to reinforce the view that it never carried passengers.
The two areas where wood is fitted beneath the structure in the first photograph, could be associated with a side barrier/handrail but there are a variety of reasons that suggest that this was either not the case, or that the work was not completed. If this device did operate, it probably did so only to demonstrate the open moving footway that you see.
If you go back to the description that I gave of the operation, we can now take this a stage further. Those of you who are technically minded will appreciate that there is a potential problem in the operation that I have described. If the footway swung inwards and outwards at the upper and lower points in a way that altered the radius of the curve, there was a real possibility that the whole mechanism would lock-up.
Unfortunately, only the lower part of this device survived, together with a sketch which can only be described as 'extremely imaginative', so we cannot be 100% certain how this problem was avoided. What seems likely is that Reno created eccentric spirals - the upward and downward ones of which rotated around their own axis, and each of which was off-centre in relation to the shaft and to each other. Regardless of this, the driveshaft that operated this mechanism was in a central position. This means that someone ascending would at first be in a position close to the side of the shaft, would swing away from it as they moved upwards and would then find themselves moving back towards it as they ascended further. A person descending would mirror these movements in exactly the opposite way, depending on their position in the shaft. This would allow the structure to maintain a constant curve and, although it is difficult to describe, the mechanics are reasonably simple.
Now, with passengers swinging into the shaft and back towards the wall, and with those going in the opposite direction doing the same, plus a rotating driveshaft and spindles in the centre, the whole thing must have looked like something out of a Victorian horror novel. This place cannot have been the most pleasant of environments. In addition, we should remember that there was the drop down the shaft, through the moving mechanism. There are contemporary suggestions that it was planned to enclose the escalator within walls to conceal all of this, but it appears that this was not done. If it had been installed it would certainly have created an environment that was extremely claustrophobic. It is not difficult to imagine the reaction of some passengers enclosed in such a narrow space, with no sight of where they were going to or coming from and with a lot of frightening mechanical noises coming through the wall.
When deciding whether such a device would be practical, perhaps it is worth thinking exactly how maintenance would have been carried out? There is also the matter of what would happen in the event of a breakdown. From my experience on a very short section, I can confirm that it was not the easiest of things to walk up.
Reno might be considered ahead of his time. The basis of the idea was sound, but the technology of the period was lacking. Using a wider version of his design, coupled with modern materials and electric drive, this could work well. It would also be relatively easy to convert it into a true escalator (a moving staircase) by adding double faced risers; something that Reno did not have access to.

[Oracle]

I wrote a long treatise and then pressed the wrong button and hey presto! Disappeared!

Anyhow, to reprise what I was going to say: the period 1895-1905 was a period of considerable engineering development that started arguably with money becoming available to be invested in scheme after scheme. It may well have started with the safety bycicle and then with the liberation of women and men (in that order) the bicycle industry took off, and men who had become involved in the industry went into tramways: new build or conversion to electric from horsedrawn or steam. It was inevitable that with Carl Benz's promotion of the automobile that required electrical componentry that those involved in tramways and bicycles would stick their fingers into other means to make money. Bicycles thus became motor bicycyles or motorcycles, and then/also motor cars. Of course we also had the electric railway developments but it seems few of those involved in tramways moved over to railways proper.

Associated with the boom during this period was the amazing flurry of patent-lodging with people like Harry Lawson, the bike-to trams-to car entrepeneur, buying up the rights to patents with a view to extracting as much money as possible by forming new limited companies, often with aristocrats on the board, then inviting public subscription for shares, then in the case of Lawson, being jailed [1901] for fraud or going bankrupt as the schemes failed, or were sold on to others determined to make a go of it. The public must have lost heavily in many cases from what I have seen. Associated with the automotive industry I should add was a burgeoning accessory industry, and that brought a flurry of new electrical devices that we now take for granted but patent after patent was lodged showing how inventors sought to improve and redesign.

Anyhow, my interest here is not as an engineer, as I will never be one, but as an automotive and tramway historian. I therefore delve into patents a lot and have undertaken considerable research into the period in question. My understanding is that US inventors lodged patents in Washington and through Patent Agents in London (to cover the Empire) as well as it seems in Berlin and Paris. However, the Agents must have earned a pretty penny or two judging by the sheer number of patents lodged in the period, and often patents were based on "improvements" to someone else's, quite legitimately. I therefore query whether Seeberger "improved" Reno's inventions or the other way round, and others'? Both men were in the States, Reno in New York City and Seeberger in Chicago. What we can say however is that Seeberger lodged his patent for a spiral escalator in January 1899 in Berlin, and therefor must have come up with the idea say two years previously? Did he patent it in Washington? In any event Seeberger's looks more practical, and predates Reno's Holloway Road "escalator" by a fundamental few years, at a time when every month it seems someone was lauding their new technological wonder in the press.

I let the jury decide who was first, and whose idea was more realistic. If you look at one of Reno's patents it involves it seems riding on a seat, as in a fairground ride, which makes sense. If you look at Seeberger's I believe that you can see a an appreciation of how to transport humans who did not wish to subject themselves to perceived risk! Another point about Reno's: how on Earth was it going to accommodate passengers in the dress of the time, particularly women with their dresses and bags? From the limited views in Seeberger's patent it looks as though he had come up with a more reasonable solution. Pity he seems not to have actually built one.

Herewith drawings:
www.gmhistorian.btinternet.co.uk/seeberger.pdf

Am I right in saying that it shows sidewalls and a handrail?

[CSLR]

Thanks for that link Oracle.
It looks like Figure 2 on Page I partly illustrates the eccentric axis principle that I was trying to explain.

[Oracle]

It looks like Figure 2 on Page I partly illustrates the eccentric axis principle that I was trying to explain.

Great minds thinking alike or pinching an idea of your rival? I go with the latter. Although it would be termed "improvements" or "distinct from" and not impinging on the other's patents.

Also if the two up and down spiral ran in the same shaft, this was surely a double helix? As in the DNA molecule.

[CSLR]

oracle said:

Also if the two up and down spiral ran in the same shaft, this was surely a double helix? As in the DNA molecule.

Yes, I noticed that.
I am sure that a conspiracy theorist at some future date will use this to show that Reno built a giant three-dimensional replica of a DNA module in an unused lift shaft at Holloway Road many decades before science had identified such a structure. The potential inflammatory nature of such a discovery on society in the early 1900s, may also be used to explain why it was hidden away for so many years.

[CSLR]

To clarify a point. If we use the DNA structure to describe the Reno Circular Escalator, we should probably be looking at a double helix with offset axes, but with the two helices spiralling in opposite directions. The offset being required to avoid a collision where the path of one helix crosses the other.

[Deleted]

It would be wey interesting to see someone try to recreate a model, detailing its use and how it all worked... then we can get a greater idea of how it all worked... as we don't have much to go by, in the way of pictures, a little imaginative workmwill have to go into it...
I think I am right in saying that the 'steps' on this were wooden slats...

[Oracle]

The one thing Reno did however that made a difference was the addition of a the comb to stop things getting stuck at the top. However I do query whether Reno directly cribbed Seeberger's design, but these things happened at that tumultuos time. Reno did however actually make the darned thing and not just leave the ideas on paper.

This has been one of the most fascinating threads, on any forum, in my recent and not-so-recent experience. Thank you.

[Deleted]

oracle said:

This has been one of the most fascinating threads, on any forum, in my recent and not-so-recent experience. Thank you.

Might I second that opinion? I am dying to see a real working prototype actually being built. It sounds so hare-brained that it would be wonderful if it was. Unfortunately, would never get past HSE, mind you.

[Hutch]

This one was published on the BBC website today and illustrates its size and use



From news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/6182967.stm

[Deleted]

That looks ever such a steep incline... the worker on the left, he's holding on to a bolt or summat... would this have been used for a handrail to be fitted later?

[Deleted]

alantan said:

Unfortunately, would never get past HSE, mind you.

It didn't even get past HSE in those days.......let alone now!

[Deleted]

cslr said:

Now, with passengers swinging into the shaft and back towards the wall, and with those going in the opposite direction doing the same, plus a rotating driveshaft and spindles in the centre, the whole thing must have looked like something out of a Victorian horror novel. This place cannot have been the most pleasant of environments. In addition, we should remember that there was the drop down the shaft, through the moving mechanism. There are contemporary suggestions that it was planned to enclose the escalator within walls to conceal all of this, but it appears that this was not done. If it had been installed it would certainly have created an environment that was extremely claustrophobic. It is not difficult to imagine the reaction of some passengers enclosed in such a narrow space, with no sight of where they were going to or coming from and with a lot of frightening mechanical noises coming through the wall.

That section of text just about sums it up CSLR, this thing looks amazingly scary! Only when I saw the photos in this thread did the whole horror (I can't think of another way to put it) of this invention actually come together. ATO has a good idea, in that a model of this piece of machinery would be useful, but again, I can't get away from looking at those photos - frightening stuff!

[Deleted]

In that photo, the bloke on the right looks like he has a handrail extending upwards and round along with his stairway..

Sam

[Oracle]

I see what you mean! It would have been a simple matter to bolt a wooden circular-section rail to the segments. As regards the upwards one, I wonder if the guy is indeed holding a metal dowl to which an internal handrail would have been bolted? That "thing" makes me shudder just looking at it. It must have made a cacophany of noise when it worked, and I just cannot see how anyone could remain upright: the angle is too steep. Phew!

[Deleted]

I personally think it looks like great fun....... ;D

Sam

[Oracle]

So's having a wisdom tooth pulled without anaesthetic...much more fun that the "helter-skelter from hell".

[Deleted]

oracle said:

So's having a wisdom tooth pulled without anaesthetic...much more fun that the "helter-skelter from hell".

I agree.......this spiral death - trap doesn't look like fun to me. Mind you, it is very interesting....................

[Phil]

alexh said:

I agree.......this spiral death - trap doesn't look like fun to me. Mind you, it is very interesting....................

So was the Sinclair C5 (the 'vehicle'..). But would you have used one (if you're old enough to remember them)?

[Oracle]

So is Orthodontistry! Seriously, industrial archaeology fascinates, and this is up there with the Crystal Palace Pneumatic Railway. However we seem to have more hard evidence than the CPAE. Fascinating.

[CSLR]

This is a speculative illustration of what the Holloway Road contraption was expected to look like when completed.
If we note the artistic license that is apparent from the cathedral like proportions of the booking office to the basement circulating area a few feet from the platform edge, then we must also accept that other aspects of this picture are highly suspect. However, if you study the right hand picture, you will see how the offset double helices are laid out (ignore the left hand side as the artist appears to have got completely lost when trying to add sections of the proposed enclosing walls. These walls could never actually have been built in the way shown as there would have been conflict at the point where the double helices crossed. They may also have created a barrier that would have prevented the connection of the central drive mechanism that was supposed to keep the bits and pieces moving.
The artist has coveniently left out the central drive shaft and spindles, possibly to make the whole thing look more spacious and welcoming, but also because the alignment error that he has made to the left of this illustration would have their connection physically impossible.





You might like to note the man at the top who appears to be placing a suitcase or trolley in front of him. Consider the steep downhill slope ahead, the narrow moving pathway between two side barriers, the passengers trying to maintain their dignity and their balance. Now spend a few moments pondering the word 'skittles'.

[DrJimi]

Of course you now have me wondering if I could create an animated version of this in TSM or more likely 3D Canvas. To me the shape and operation is visually enchanting and at the same time so Heath-Robinson (or Rube Goldberg for us US folks). Has anyone build one from Lego? ;D

/Jimi (3D primitive distorter at large)

[Oracle]

Another photo:
photos.ltmcollection.org/images/max/1d/i000041d.jpg

[jaasj]

Hi. I'm sure most of you know about the spiral escalator that was experimentally installed at Holloway Road in the early 1900s. It was rediscovered in the late 1980s and some segments are now on display at Acton depot.

This forum has a thread from 2006 about it here which really intrigues me, because a user called CSLR seems to have embedded two images of the escalator in situ, taken when it was still at Holloway Road.

Unfortunately, these images are now dead, so it's impossible to view them, and there's simply no trace of them on the internet. I'm wondering if anyone has the images to repost, or indeed any other images not yet shared?

The only images of the spiral escalator online are the widespread one of two workmen taken while it was under construction, and some taken at Acton depot, but it would be great to see the photos that were shared taken upon its rediscovery at Holloway Road.

The missing images were described as:

"This is a photograph of part of the remains of the Reno Circular 'escalator' at Holloway Road shortly before sections were removed by LTM."

"This is another photograph of part of the Reno Circular 'Escalator, taken when it was still in place at Holloway Road."

The user that posted them, CSLR, was last active in 2018.

[Chris M]

I've just send CSLR a message on the forum, as he has been known to respond to such in the past. As his account has not been pruned for inactivity, its possible that he has been in touch with forum staff more recently than his last message would indicate - in any case its worth a try!

[brigham]

RENO were slightly ahead of OTIS with the development of inclined moving footways. The most striking difference was that the RENO had no steps; it was a moving ramp, rather than a moving staircase.
Both types are, of course, still in widespread use.

[jimbo]

I guess CAD software has advanced over the past 14 years. Is anyone now able to meet the challenge of producing a model to show how this was supposed to work, for those of us less mechanically minded and unable to follow the descriptions provided.

[class411]

What was the return path?

Or was it a pair of escalators so that the elements went up one unit, then along, and then down an adjacent unit?

[simran1966]

Assuming this is it, and the two men in the picture are going up and down respectively, it looks a bit like a double helix:
londonist.com/london/transport/the-spiral-escalator-of-holloway-road

I guess that would mean the individual sections passing from one spiral to the other at the top and bottom.