You’ll learn more about elevators than you ever wanted to know in this New Yorker article: Up and Then Down. The article includes the story of Nicholas White, who was trapped for 41 hours without any food or water in an elevator. It’s pretty horrific, if you concretely imagine what that would be like. You can even help your imagination by watching this time-lapse video of him stuck in the elevator.
I ride the elevators at CU Boulder pretty frequently. Kate accompanies me teach my classes at CU Boulder every Tuesday and Thursday. (She’s perfectly well-behaved, she needs the exercise, and she loves to come with me.) She’s too old and creaky to go up and down the stairs, so we take the elevators. After reading that article, though, I’ll never ride an elevator again without a working cell phone!
