A
mechanical device used to easily
ascend or
descend totally vertically between multiple floors in a building.
In
England, they are more commonly (that is, traditionally) referred to as lifts. Various mechanisms in place make elevator cars incapable of falling from most failures (i.e. due to cables breaking) - this causes notches in the side of the elevator to come out and prevent the elevator from falling, due to the lack of tension on the cable which keeps the notches in.
The
Thirteenth floor is often skipped in these devices for the purpose of not inflicting
bad luck.
An
elevator is first entered by pressing the call button on a panel usually mounted outside the
elevator doors.
Some
elevators just feature a single call
button, others feature up and down call buttons, depending on whether you want to go up or down, respectively.
It will take a while for the
Elevator to reach your floor, and the time will vary depending on what floor the
elevator car is currently at, how many people in between the floors between the actual elevator car and you have pressed the
buttons on their floors, which makes the elevator car stop there first. For this reason,
elevators often feature up and down
buttons instead of just one call
button; in this case, calling an elevator while it is in motion will make the elevator stop for you only if you're heading in the same direction. Otherwise, it will attend to the request at the next possible opportunity, such as when someone in the elevator selects to go to (or past) your floor, or when it becomes idle.
Once inside,
elevators usually feature buttons for each floor, which
illuminate when pressed, door open and close buttons (the latter may be a
placebo), and an
emergency stop button, which usually you have to resist pressing. Sometimes they also feature an
emergency phone if the lift breaks down, or an
alarm.
Oftentimes two
elevators are linked together, so that there is one call panel on each floor for two (or more)
elevators, and when you press the appropriate button, the increased number of available cars will be taken advantage of when calculating the most efficient way and order in which to serve you.
Elevators are sometimes (as when
fire alarms are sounded or it is the weekend in
corporate buildings)
locked down on the ground/first floor.
One of the fact-of-life
annoyances is that how often the
elevator instead of going
directly to your destination stops to pick up people who have pressed the button in the direction you are going between the floor you were at and the floor you are going to, slowing your chosen method of transit considerably and making you ask yourself:
Would I be there by now if I'd taken the stairs?
Elevators are usually made of
glass or
metal, and often the
external doors can be opened manually (i.e. for
maintenance) using an
elevator key.