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Show A RISKY EXPERIMENT. The elevator at the Parker House has recently been fitted with an Ellithorpe safety air cushion, for preventing the casualties resulting from the fall of elevator cars, and yesterday a trial of the apparatus took place, which resulted in a pretty bad shaking up of several persons, and a pretty bad scare to the occupants of the building. The patent is based upon the principle that air is nearly incompressible, and, roughly speaking, consists in having the elevator car fitted, by means of a rubber packing nearly air tight in the well which is also made air tight, with the exception of a few passages left so that the air can flow out and let the car down gradually, the expectation being that if the ropes should break, the cumulative pressure of the air under the car will stop it before it reaches the bottom and only allow it to glide slowly down. The apparatus has been fitted to the Parker House elevator, but through some carelessness on the part of the builders the frame of the lower door was not examined to ascertain its strength, though extra thick glass was placed in the windows of the door, and the result was that when the Boston agent of the patent and several other gentlemen entered the car at the top of the building and ??? the rope reversed, allowing the car to fall the whole eighty feet to the ground floor, the pressure of the air, when the car reached a space between the first and second stories, blew out the door, transom, and the whole framework around them, and precipitated the car to the bottom of the well, shaking up but not seriously injuring the occupants of the car, and breaking considerable crockery and glass, breaking the plaster on the walls of the cafe in the basement, and badly scaring the inmates of the room. The eight gentlemen who were in the car were badly shaken up and more or less bruised, but not seriously injured. When they emerged from the car they were covered with dust and dirt, some of them were stained with blood from cuts on the head and other parts of the body caused by the falling of the chandelier and breaking of the mirror in the car. The crash, the dust, the knowledge that a somewhat risky experiment was to be made, attracted a scared crowd of all the occupants of the building from private rooms, parlors, dining room and kitchen, all eagerly inquiring if anyone was hurt, while the report that Parker's elevator had fallen drew in a large and curious crowd from the street, and for a few minutes ???????????? until it became known that no one was seriously injured. Considering that the car fell eighty feet, the fact that the injury to the elevator car and to those in it was slight is certainly a fact in favor of the patent. It is the testimony of all in the car that when it got into the space which is fitted air tight to the car, which extends to the second story, its speed was checked, and almost stopped until the door gave way, when of course, it started again, and struck bottom with great force. -- Boston Journal. |