History Book - An elevating invention

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, March 21st. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, the WORLD History Book. Here’s associate correspondent Harrison Waters with a few notable anniversaries for the third week of March.

HARRISON WATTERS, ASSOCIATE CORRESPONDENT: In early 1812, Massachusetts’ Governor Elbridge Gerry was worried that the Federalist party was becoming too powerful in Congress. He feared they were dragging the United States into another war with Great Britain. To reduce the number of Federalist senators from Massachusetts, Gerry worked with his party to change how the state was represented in Congress.

HISTORY CHANNEL: This included changing Massachusetts' Senate districts from reflecting county lines to ones benefiting the Democratic Republicans.

Soon after the district maps came out The Boston Gazette published a cartoon of one of the distorted districts on March 26th. The map was fitted out with a salamander’s head, wings, and tail. As George Grant would say, the cartoon title was a portmanteau of Gerry and Salamander or Gerry-mander.

Gerry with a hard G. The Wall Street Journal ran a video in 2018 explaining why we pronounce it gerrymander today.

WALL STREET JOURNAL: It all goes back to that cartoon. This is prior to radio. There was no audio transmission except word of mouth and so the word 'gerrymander' traveled further and faster than the pronunciation of the family name of Gerry.

Despite signing the Declaration of Independence and serving as James Madison’s Vice President, Gerry is remembered most for his crooked map drawing. At the election later in 1812, Gerry lost his office as governor but his scheme to get Democratic-Republican senators to Congress worked. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to avoid the War of 1812. And it set the stage for two centuries of wrangling over what is fair and just representation.

From the origin of one problem to the end of another, 170 years ago this week Elisha Otis opened the first public safety elevator.

Elevators have been around since the Romans were building aqueducts, but they all had the same problem: If the cables broke, the platform would fall.

In 1852, while building furniture hoists for a bedstead manufacturer, Otis jerry-rigged a mechanism that would automatically lock the lift in place if the ropes broke. The invention was a success. But it wasn’t until two years later that his business really took off…thanks to the 1854 World’s Fair.

Steve Hoefer for Make: Inventions explains what happened.

HOEFER: In front of a crowd of curious onlookers he rode his elevator to the top and then commanded his assistant to cut the rope with an ax. When the rope split, the elevator fell only a few inches and stopped.

The stunt paid off. Big time. Here’s YouTuber The History Guy:

THE HISTORY GUY: After the World's Fair, Otis was said to have doubled his sales every year thereafter and in 1898 Otis absorbed 14 of its major competitors.

On March 23rd, 1857, Otis installed the first safety elevator for passenger service in a New York City department store. While the inventor patented many other devices, including a steam plow and bake oven, the invention that took his name around the world was the elevator. The Otis safety elevator made high rises—and the modern city possible.

OTIS ELEVATOR PROMO VIDEO: Today Otis is still the largest elevator company in the world with 1.2 million units in service and annual sales approaching six billion dollars. Elisha Otis: a business legend.

We end today with Russia’s annexation of Crimea, 8 years ago this week.

NEWS REPORT: The Russian President Vladimir Putin receiving a standing ovation there from both houses of parliament, whom he’s just addressed about the situation in Crimea, explaining that Crimea has historically in the minds of Russians always been part of Russia.

But one person in the room was not cheering—or standing—and he went on to cast the single vote against annexing Crimea.

Ilya Ponomarev was an energy entrepreneur who left business in 2007 to represent Siberia in parliament. Ponomarev was alarmed when Putin described the Ukrainians who opposed annexation as “national traitors.” That term was first used by Adolf Hitler.

PONOMAREV: And so when Putin said that, and when everybody stood up and started applauding him, and cheering “hail to the chief,” and you know “yes, we’ve done it,” and stuff like that, I thought you know, somebody needs to be against.

Ponomarev knew his district was split on the merits of annexation. When he saw the overwhelming support for Putin’s plan, he chose to represent the millions of Russians in opposition and faced immediate backlash. Ponomarev resisted calls to resign but he did leave the country, living in the United States for a year before moving to Ukraine—where he’s lived since 2016.

Ponomarev remains critical of Putin’s actions—and while he is concerned about what Putin might do in his war with Ukraine—he believes that the Russians and Ukrainians are brothers and sisters who can live in peace.

PONOMAREV: Putin will go. He is not immortal. No technologies will make him immortal, we will make sure of this in Silicon Valley, you know, and the situation will definitely change. Thank you.

That’s this week’s World History Book. I’m Harrison Watters.

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