Of the nearly 70,000 elevators in New York City, there remain a few that are manually operated, left over from the early days when riding an elevator was a unique experience, complete with operators who will take you to the height you desire. Some are as opulent as they day they were unveiled, adorned with colorful art and piloted by operators who wear white gloves. Others are utilitarian, just a cage through which you can see floors flying past. And some have been remodeled to resemble modern elevators, although they still require an operator.
Collectively they form a hidden museum of obsolete technology and anachronistic employment, a network of cabinets of wonder staffed round the clock. No one knows how many there are, exactly. The city Department of Buildings offered a list of more than 600, but spot checks indicated that most had gone push-button long ago. On the other hand, officials at Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, to which most doormen and elevator operators belong, said they knew of only one or two.
A non-exhaustive field survey this fall turned up 53 buildings with manual passenger elevators. There are undoubtedly dozens more, but probably not hundreds.
Why they still exist in such relative profusion, when the city is down to its last few seltzer men and its final full-time typewriter repair shop, when replacement parts are no longer made and must be machined by hand, is a question with many answers. But sentiment plays a large part.
There are also architectural reasons for keeping 100-year-old elevators in some buildings. The people who make a living operating these elevators have quite a few stories to tell. Read about the remaining manual elevators of New York City at the New York Times. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Flickr user caren litherland)
Comments (0)
Anyone that has ever had a dog, cat, horse, or any pet really, would probably agree that duh, of course animals have personality.
I agree with a lot of the article, but we still need to be cautious in assigning emotions to animals based on behavior. We tend to see what we want to see.
Um. Wot? Doesn't it just mean that they're social animals that are used to living in groups and instinctually avoid doing things that harm the group?
Way to project and anthropomorphize, science! Gotta keep those funding grants rolling in.
Altruism in animals doesn't necessarily equate to morality.
Seeing as rhesus monkeys are such social animals, they tend to be strongly motivated to look out for the wellbeing of the group. A rhesus monkey that is only out for him/herself is more likely to be shunned by the group for not contributing and would therefore be less likely to survive in the wild.
This behaviour is likely to be an evolutionary behavioural adaption.
http://www.livescience.com/bestimg/index.php?url=&cat=gayanimals
That description fits humans too.
Anthropomorphism is a perfectly respectable way to view the behaviour of animals that are closely related to humans. Chimpanzees share 97% of our genes -- it makes less sense not to assign human-like characteristics to their behaviour.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/03/animal-minds/virginia-morell-text
There are a lot of theories of morality out there by well respected scientists/anthropoligists/philosophers/theorists, yet they all have limitations. It's hard to define morality in animals when we don't yet entirely understand morlaity in humans.
WOW. It's almost like that kind of thinking has started wars among HUMANS.
Hmmm.
I do not agree with that. You can say the same about humans too. We do not know whether the other human has feelings or, not we just presume its existence. We know animals have a brain and an advanced nerve system, they react to pain as we do. There is no reason to assume that they do not feel as we do.
Back at the university we were taught by the lecturer about cats in animal testing. They implanted microchips and various instruments into their brains with which they could discover that they actually had dreams!