page_title: Elevator
section_title: Convenience features
hierarchical_section_title: Elevator / Convenience features
caption_attribution_description: English: Elevator virtual window
context_page_description: An elevator or lift is a type of vertical transportation machine that moves people or freight between floors, levels, or decks of a building, vessel, or other structure. Elevators are typically powered by electric motors that drive traction cables and counterweight systems such as a hoist, although some pump hydraulic fluid to raise a cylindrical piston like a jack.
  In agriculture and manufacturing, an elevator is any type of conveyor device used to lift materials in a continuous stream into bins or silos. Several types exist, such as the chain and bucket elevator, grain auger screw conveyor using the principle of Archimedes' screw, or the chain and paddles or forks of hay elevators. Languages other than English may have loanwords based on either elevator or lift. Because of wheelchair access laws, elevators are often a legal requirement in new multistory buildings, especially where wheelchair ramps would not be possible.
  There are also some elevators which can go sideways in addition to the usual up-and-down motion.
context_section_description: Elevators may feature talking devices as an accessibility aid for the blind. In addition to floor arrival notifications, the computer announces the direction of travel (OTIS is well known for this in some of their GEN2 model elevators), and notifies the passengers before the doors are to close.
  In addition to the call buttons, elevators usually have floor indicators (often illuminated by LED) and direction lanterns. The former are almost universal in cab interiors with more than two stops and may be found outside the elevators as well on one or more of the floors. Floor indicators can consist of a dial with a rotating needle, but the most common types are those with successively illuminated floor indications or LCDs. Likewise, a change of floors or an arrival at a floor is indicated by a sound, depending on the elevator.
  Direction lanterns are also found both inside and outside elevator cars, but they should always be visible from outside because their primary purpose is to help people decide whether or not to get on the elevator. If somebody waiting for the elevator wants to go up, but a car comes first that indicates that it is going down, then the person may decide not to get on the elevator. If the person waits, then one will still stop going up. Direction indicators are sometimes etched with arrows or shaped like arrows and/or use the convention that one that lights up red means "down" and green (or white) means "up". Since the colour convention is often undermined or over-ridden by systems that do not invoke it, it is usually used only in conjunction with other differentiating factors. An example of a place whose elevators use only the colour convention to differentiate between directions is the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, where a single circle can be made to light up green for "up" and red for "down". Sometimes directions must be inferred by the position of the indicators relative to one another.
  In addition to lanterns, most elevators have a chime to indicate if the elevator is going up or down either before or after the doors open, usually in conjunction with the lanterns lighting up. For example, one chime can indicate "up", two "down", and no chimes indicate an elevator that is 'free'.
  Observatory service elevators often convey other facts of interest, including elevator speed, stopwatch, and current position (altitude), as with the case for Taipei 101's service elevators.
  There are several technologies aimed to provide better experience to passengers suffering from claustrophobia, anthropophobia or social anxiety. Israeli startup DigiGage uses motion sensors to scroll the pre-rendered images, building and floor-specific content on a screen embedded into the wall as the cab moves up and down. British company LiftEye provides a virtual window technology to turn common elevator into panoramic. It creates 3d video panorama using live feed from cameras placed vertically along the facade and synchronises it with cab movement. The video is projected on a wall-sized screens making it look like the walls are made of glass.
caption: Elevator with a virtual window affording a view of the City of London
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