Jesse W. Reno

Jesse Wilford Reno ( * August 4, 1861 in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, † June 2, 1947 in New York ) was an American engineer. He developed in 1891 the predecessor of today's escalator, he in September 1896 in a park in Coney Iceland (Long Iceland ) presented to the public. Approximately 7,500 spectators could be transported during the two-week display of the two and a half meters high.

Life

Life and work

Jesse Reno was born in 1861 in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He spent his early years in the Middle South and the South. At the age of 16, he moved with his family to Americus, Georgia, where he designed the first plans for his " inclined stairway ". In 1883 he completed his engineering studies at Lehigh University and wrote his thesis on the Hudson River tunnel. After graduating, he worked for a mining company in Colorado and later for a power plant. Due to the technological boom of this time and his great intellectual curiosity he decided to go to New York, where he registered his first patent for an electric staircase with motor drive on 15 March 1892. He had built a staircase in a wooden strips occupied and sloping landscaped endless belt and showed her first in 1896 to the public ( see below). Although already an escalator similar development by Nathan Ames of Saugus in Essex County was several years earlier, on March 9, 1859, Massachusetts patented, who had never built.

Death

Reno died in 1947 in New York. Some of the inclined lifts were constructed by him until well into the 1990s in parts of America during operation.

Inclined stairway

The endless conveyor in Coney Iceland was developed when Reno was commissioned to design a subway. Early 1896, he presented his plans, which included an inclined elevator for the transport of people. His plans were in fact defeated, but his idea survived. Many ground-breaking properties of the inclined elevator are still used in escalators, such as the rubber- covered handrail. In addition, Reno developed a system that was used to prevent objects or legs stuck in the stairs. In the five years after the presentation of his stairs in Coney Iceland invention in its numerous shops and subway stations was installed. In 1902 he founded the company in Reno Electric Stairways and Conveyors, Ltd., which was bought ten years later by Otis Elevators. The company had developed on Renos idea based the moving elevator in a moving staircase and this escalator ( dt: Escalator ) called.