A Shared History

With this issue, ELEVATOR WORLD begins celebrating its 70th anniversary, albeit a little early. EW’s first issue was published in 1953, which makes 2023 our platinum anniversary, but we couldn’t help ourselves from starting the celebration now, in conjunction with LIFTEX 2022. It seems fitting. We have a lot to be thankful for and many people to thank, so we’re going to celebrate from now until well into 2023. We begin this anniversary by thanking you for reading, writing, sharing and supporting EW for so many years and for welcoming ELEVATOR WORLD UK into the fold. 

When you have 70 years of history documenting a single industry, you feel an obligation to pull from your archives and reflect on what has happened, who was there and why it mattered.

In 1982, my grandfather and EW founder, Bill Sturgeon, spent 40 days in the U.K. His goal was to gain a clear understanding of the market, its players and its associations and share that with EW readers. He ended up writing what we then called an “annual study” of more than 100 pages for EW’s October 1982 issue. The world thinks everything can be found on the internet, but it can’t. In fact, the information from that special U.K. annual study is not even on EW’s website. However, over the next year, we will be reproducing and reflecting on the history of the U.K. lift industry in the unique way that only we can. We have enlisted the help of EW History Correspondent Dr. Lee Gray, who will become a regular columnist for this magazine next year. Researching the industry’s storied history helps to remind us of who we are, where we came from and what our purpose is. Oscar Wilde said, “Anybody can make history; only a great man can write it.” My grandfather certainly did that.

Its people like my grandfather who are behind our industry’s rich history, innovation, invention and so much more. In this issue, our first ELEVATOR WORLD UK People Issue, we honor nine dynamic vertical-transportation (VT) experts. They are leaders, lifelong learners and teachers who, without exception, are full of smarts, determination and passion for this industry. They serve in many capacities for a variety of companies throughout the U.K. They work in the field and in the office; they work for consultancies, family businesses and beyond; and they maintain, construct and educate to make this industry better and safer every day. Though our short profiles certainly can’t tell their full stories, we hope they convey some of what makes them so special.

We plan to make The People Issue an annual celebration of the U.K. industry’s experts, and we hope you’ll take the opportunity to nominate those deserving of the honor next year. We know there are so many of you out there.

In this issue, we focus on Environmental Issues, an area of growing importance and urgency around the world. We particularly look at how these issues affect VT. We know that lifts and escalators use only 7-10% of a building’s energy, and we have been improving on that for decades. Now we are looking toward sustainability. That means using processes that are environmentally responsible and resource-efficient throughout a product’s lifecycle, at every stage, from design, manufacture, installation, operation, maintenance and even demolition to be sure sustainable processes are being used.

In Climate Friendly to Climate Neutral, author Undine Stricker-Berghoff interviews the “Big 4” elevator companies — KONE, Otis, Schindler and TK Elevator — about the technical features of their new generation of elevators and escalators and how they are progressing to climate neutral status. Authors Jaakko Kalliomäki, et al, provide an in-depth analysis of a Computational Environment for Simulating Impact of Building Sway on High-Rise LIfts, something of growing importance as buildings grow taller and slimmer in urban areas around the world. In Making an Impact, Wittur presents its inaugural sustainability report, something many companies are doing these days.

We offer so much more in this issue, including a preview of LIFTEX 2022, the event’s 34th iteration, in LIFTEX Gears Up. Event organizers delve into what is being called the show’s “biggest yet.” We’ll be there, and we hope to see you there, too. Come visit our booth and celebrate with us.