All about elevators

Elevators have been an essential technology that contributed to the growth
of the modern era. And yet it really never got the amount of acknowledged attention
that it deserves unlike computers, the Internet or Crest
Teeth Whitening Strips.
Without which, buildings would never get as high as a few floors. Imagine how
these buildings would be absurd if building architects have not included
some contraption that would move people other than the stairs.

So why am I blabbing about elevators? Well, last Friday, a fire broke out
on the seventh floor of our office building. Though the fire damage was contained
on the 7th floor, water from the sprinkler system had seeped through the lower
floors and rendered the 2 elevators inoperable for the most of yesterday. Since
our office is in the 9th, I guess you can imagine the ordeal of taking the
stairs to the office. Which brings me to the point that since the first passenger
one was introduced by Otis mid 1800s has served its purpose so well that it
gone inconspicuous most of the time.

So as I tackled the stairs and literally was burning my breakfast (which by
the way was just 2 pieces of peanut buttered toast and coffee) I came to ponder
that our usage of elevators is a culture by itself. It even has its own etiquettes and music genre to boot.

Human Behaviour and Elevators

A friend of mine who was a
psychology student told me an experiment his professor has asked them to do
on elevators. Normally people face towards the door when they take an elevator.
But try taking the elevator with your back on the elevator door facing all
these people and you would notice how you make everyone uneasy. I asked what
is the point of that experiment. Apparently it shows the perceived violation
of personal space everyone feel on an enclose space like an elevator. Simply
put you are not in an elevator to be social, it is just incidental.

There is one behaviour I never got around asking any behavioural scientist.
The one were people would tend to still push the button to call the elevator,
despite the fact that you already did that before them. Unless the visual indicator
of a lighted button means anything else, I doubt that the elevator would come
faster with successive presses. (By the way, I also notice this tendency with
people on crosswalks).

We experienced it before, everyone does it but no one wants to admit it. You
saw someone rushing trying to catch the elevator that is about to close. Your
mind is debating the choice. Are you going to push the open button to accommodate
the person or pretend you did not see because it would delay you 10 seconds
into your destination. And the variation to that, pretend you are desperately
pushing the button but in reality you are pushing the “close door” button.
It almost equivalent to the anomaly called road rage where normally courteous
people change behaviour when they are in a steering wheel.

On the other side of the coin, I do not understand the rushing. It is not
like the next elevator car won’t arrive in a few seconds.

How about the person who holds the elevator door to wait for his companion? “He
will be here any second”. You see “any second” is quite a relative
term, it could mean just 2 blinks of an eye or half of my lunch period.

A.I.

The elevator car is in the third floor. A person on the fourth floor pushes
the call button to get down. At the same time, person on second floor called
same elevator to go up. Which one would the elevator car accommodate first?
I do not have the answer to that, but brings me to the point of the intricate
programming that goes with elevator operation.

A more complex one… A three-car elevator on a 10-floor building. First car
is on 8th floor taking a passenger to get down. Second car is in 8th floor
too and Third car is in 5th floor. Person on 6th floor push button to get down.
Which car would accommodate 6th floor person. First car, which is getting down
anyway, mildly delaying 8th floor passenger. Second car with a small delay
for the 6th floor person or third car, which is closer to 6th floor person.
Still no answer for that but these are type of decision making incorporated
into elevator car programming that it is pretty close to Artificial Intelligence.
Programming which tries to balance operation efficiency with passenger (in)conveniences
and wait times.

I remember in the early 90s when I got hold of a PC game called SimTower.
The ultimate goal on that game is to build a 100-storey building and make it
profitable. I never quite finished that game since despite managing to build
the 100-storey building, I always end up with a financial loss. I cannot make
tenants on the higher floors to stay because my elevator system sucks. Passengers
get quite unhappy because they literally have to wait several days to get to
the topmost floors.

The elevator system in our office building has this weird programming itself,
which seems to manifest after office hours. Say I call the elevator car that
is in a higher floor from the ground to go up. So while the elevator is going
down, I press the down button too. When the car finally reaches the ground,
the arrow indicator is pointing downward. Meaning it is accommodating whoever
called the car to go down to the underground parking. This despite the up button
was pressed first. Some artificial intelligence!

Scatter brain thoughts

Here is an unconfirmed elevator tip. Apparently, if you press the close
button and your destination floor at the same time, the car turns to an express
elevator where it races to your destination floor without stopping in the in
between floors. I have not tried it since I heard it only works with Otis elevators.

On the curious but too chicken to actually do it department. I always wondered
what would happen if I press the red shaded emergency stop button on those
elevator cars. For some reason, I have visions that sprinklers would turn on,
loud annoying sounds would blare, the whole building would begin emergency
exit procedures, SWAT Teams rappelling down from helicopters and this motherly
voice keeps repeating “This building would self destruct in *blah* seconds”.
Okay I am exaggerating but you get the idea.

Elevators have also been an object of pranks and humour. We all know the dreaded
one: where someone would pull an annoying prank of pressing all the floor buttons
on their way out. But so far the funniest one I found that was suggested is
this:

“For the best reaction, have your cell phone to your ear and an angry
look on your face as the doors open. As you join the other passengers, shout
into the phone: “What do you mean I should plead criminally insane?”

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Hmm if you survived that, I am quite impressed with you. So as your time is
not totally lost here are much more interesting stuff instead.

Double Sided Laptop Monitors

Since you guys are not too eager to lend me 7 million for a town purchase,
maybe I can talk you into parting with 850K instead. A few weeks back, someone
has posted in Ebay to
sell his “patent pending” right for a dual
monitor laptop as seen from above. The bidding has now ended unfortunately
but it is not too late, nobody placed a bid on it.

Junior the Sequel

Stealing the thunder from our dear California governor, malepregnancy.com chronicles and documented the case of Mr. Lee Mingwei. The first man apparently
to bear child. Visitors to the site could inspect a variety of documentary
evidence about Mr. Mingwei’s pregnancy (news reports, pictures, video clips,
Mr. Mingwei’s EKG)