Over many years, as a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry, I have regularly received their magazine, formerly Chemistry in Britain, now Chemistry World.  This often contains an article of historical interest

Twenty or thirty years ago, I read about the foundation of an educational institute which later went on to become either today’s City University or possibly the University of North London, towards the end of the nineteenth century.  The new building contained a lift shaft, but for ten years or more, there was no lift, because the Professor of Hydraulics and the Professor of Electrical Engineering could not agree on which kind of lift should be installed.



Today I was visiting a retired Scientific Officer from one of the University of Reading departments.  He had started his career as an apprentice in a firm of lift manufacturers, and he had many interesting tales to tell.  Here are two of them.

(1) The electric components of high-powered devices such as lifts are often mounted on a base some kind of synthetic insulating material, but formerly slate was used.  One particular lift was constantly packing up due to short circuiting, and the technician was sent round to fix this.  Every sensible test had been done, but he could not find the cause.

Such an incident could wreck a technician’s career.  “Been in the job ten years and can’t find the fault – pretty useless if you ask me!”

However, whether in frustration or through serendipity, he disconnected everything and simply put his AVO across the insulating base.  He found connectivity!  Slate is an insulator, but it turns out that occasionally metallic veins are found in it (Figure 1 in this web article).  This was one of those occasions.

(2) When two or more lifts are installed in a tall building, they are often interconnected so that, for example, at the time when people are all coming home from work, they don’t have to wait while all the lifts are right at the top of the building.

The company was designing such a system for a tall building in Johannesburg, when an order came from the director, in no way were the two lifts to be interconnected.  The reason?  Apartheid was in full force, and one lift was to be for Blacks, and one for Whites.