A manager in Westinghouse

1
A manager in Westinghouses Elevator Division
happened to recognize that electric stairways
were expensive to build as each was a
custom-engineered job and service was a headache
for the for the customer and the supplier because
of the great variation in product. He was aware
that planning of anew urban transit system would
call for many escalators of large and varying
length. He asked the central product design
laboratory to develop an economical solution to
this problem.
2
What came out was the modular escalator ? an
arrangement where individual motors spaced along
the flight would share the load of driving the
steps rather than depending on a single massive
drive unit at the bottom. With this arrangement,
an escalator of any desired length could be made
from standard parts. These could easily be made
available from stock for service and repair.
There were several inventions made on the
mechanical execution of this idea that provided
good patent protection. The development was
carried off in record time and an initial order
from Washington, DC Metro System was the start of
a revised product line, a totally changed-over
factory and a present dominant share of the
market. While the basic idea was certainly not
profound, nor the technology dazzling, there was
a real advantage to the customer and to the
producer.