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Lovin' their elevator: why Germans are loopy about paternosters
- lorenzhs 11y agoThere really aren't many of them here in Germany. Funnily, the only one I ever used was in the UK, in Attenborough Tower at the University of Leicester. Never seen one in Germany, but here's a (probably incomplete) list of known paternosters worldwide: http://www.flemming-hamburg.de/patlist.htm http://www.flemming-hamburg.de/patlist.htm
- KineticLensman 11y agoI used to ride one at the University of Leeds in the 1980s. It served a five floor lecture theater known for its brutalist 1960s architecture [1]. I rode it over the top on several occasions - the car went up one side, slid horizontally and then came down again. It was a good way to queue jump but allegedly could cause the whole system to jam, in which case the people caught in the middle would be carpeted. It's now been decommissioned, apparently. [1] http://www.teachingspace.leeds.ac.uk/building_details.asp?ID=18 http://www.teachingspace.leeds.ac.uk/building_details.asp?ID...
- brodo 11y agoHere is another list: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_von_Paternosteraufz%C3%BCgen https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_von_Paternosteraufz%C3%B...
- junto 11y agoI've been in several of them in Bremen. Cool thing is that they are (mostly) in public buildings. "Haus des Reichs (Senator für Finanzen, Finanzämter)", is basically the tax office. You can walk in and ride up to the canteen and eat (on the top floor). It is also available to be used by the public (though not everyone knows that and assume that it is only for staff).
- KuchenKerze 11y agoSadly they are slowly disappearing. Mainly because of safety reasons, they are considered dangerous.
- Yuioup 11y agoJust out of curiosity. I have never ridden one of those but what can actually go wrong? From what I can see: * You can jump in too late, thus falling an unexpected height and break your ankles. * You take too long getting in thus getting a garment/arm/leg stuck between the ceiling of the paternoster and the floor. Am I correct? Or am I missing something?
- KuchenKerze 11y agoI can't think of much more that could happen. My opinion is: if you are a human equipped with a brain (which functions normally) there is not much risk using an paternoster.
- thomasz 11y agoI can assure you that this is a very dangerous assumption. In theory, almost all workplace safety regulations could be replaced by a "Just put up a 'don't be an idiot'" sign. But then we would have a lot of unnecessary deaths and horrible accidents. The are many reasons for this, but it mostly comes down to people being distracted and simple statistics - given enough time, even a small risk will lead to accidents.
- KuchenKerze 11y agoI agree partially. But labelling a coffee cup with a notice that it is hot should not be necessary.
- Asbostos 11y agoIn the same way that labeling a guillotine with a notice that it could cut your fingers off should not be necessary? In both cases they seem safe because the people using them use them every day and are familiar with the risks. Unfortunately, what happens is every now and then an experienced factory worker cuts his fingers off in the same guillotine he's been operating for decades, or an old lady needs skin grafts on her legs after spilling a cup of hot coffee just like she's been drinking for decades.
- furyg3 11y agoIt seems like there should be a way to build these in a safe way. For example, angling the ceiling of the compartment as well as where the ceiling of the building meets the compartment should offer quite a lot more safety: http://i.imgur.com/CJbf1oq.png http://i.imgur.com/CJbf1oq.png You could also imagine 'sprung' walls between the compartments that prevent limbs/feet from getting squashed. As for accessibility for disabled persons, I see no reason why a paternoster can't be switched to 'elevator mode'. You can hit a button on the wall that will stop the system when the next compartment reaches your floor, get inside with your wheelchair/baby carriage/grandpa, and push a button inside the compartment before the floor you want to get off at to do the same.
- matt4077 11y agoIndeed! Also, they should probably find a solution for that problem where little children get smashed like a not-so-lucky group of rebels in a trash compactor when the paternoster goes over the top.
- Someone 11y agoThat problem has been solved (look at the animation on https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternoster https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternoster). I guess it had been solved before the first paternoster got installed. If so, it never was a real problem.
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- TurboHaskal 11y agoThe article is full of this German reliability, efficient character mumbo jumbo, yet every administrative process takes forever here. Maybe they should build more of those.
- rffn 11y agoThe article misses important points about the reason for the outcry on the proposed law. Many people here are fed up with the overregulating nanny state with more and more unnecessary rules imposed by inept control freaks like Andrea Nahles. She also seems to have difficulties with judging the impact of her ideas. There are now way too many similar the her in today's politics (throughout most of the political parties in Germany).
- _pmf_ 11y ago> rules imposed by inept control freaks like Andrea Nahles Thank god we have the CSU to counter balance these socialist control freaks and their utterly ridiculous ideas, right?
- einrealist 11y agoHaha, you mean the CSU which advertises data retention whenever a car tire pops? If I can think of one control freak party, its the one that wants tighter control over refugees. Not that anything hurts the clean image of the typical bavarian town.
- rffn 11y agoThere is not much a difference to me whether she want to have mandatory classes on Paternoster use, the Greens want to impose a veggie day a week or the CSU wants to have a data retention law to allow to sniff in our digital life. I do not want any of this. For the parties missing in this list above I am sure I can find for almost all of them a fitting example to add them. To me this seems to be a more general issue.
- 3pt14159 11y agoHow do people in wheel chairs and crutches reach different floors? If there is a handicapped or moving elevator as well, and if there is an auto-stop mechanism if someone's foot is stuck between lift and ceiling, then I see no reason why these shouldn't be in every office building or condo. They are clearly way more time efficient.
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- MaximillianII 11y agoI was lucky to work in a building equipped with a Paternoster in Munich, Germany. We had a fancy startup office, but the Paternoster was the feature I liked most!
- artumi-richard 11y agoI used one in the Arts Tower of Sheffield University where I studied. It was fun, but felt slow. There were also 2 (3?) conventional elevators that seemed like the best bet when doing more than 5 floors. It's still functional. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arts_Tower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arts_Tower
- Robadob 11y agoYeah, I've been on that one to and was rather unimpressed. One show did a segment about it a year or so ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAjYAfb_HPk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAjYAfb_HPk
- toothbrush 11y agoI've seen it mentioned here and there that one isn't supposed to ride it all the way around (that is, on the horizontal sections), but the reason escapes me. If you stay inside the cabin, what exactly can go wrong? (serious question) Getting stuck doesn't seem logical, why would the probability of the paternoster stopping increase when there is a (modest) load on the horizontal sections?
- yabatopia 11y agoSome people wrongfully believed the elevator cabin was fixed to the chain. So at the top or bottom the cabin would turn upsidedown, including the passenger, rather than moving horizontally.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoThe reason is that the cabins are being cleaned on the bottom and top of the loop - there's a mesh of blades entering the cabin making sure there's nothing left on, or inside the walls and then the remnants of whatever it was that was not supposed to be there are dropped through an open hole in the floor to the recycling bin (waste from paternosters is obviously recycled, this is Germany we're talking about). ;). More seriously though, I guess it's not that you can't, only that you shouldn't, because there's always a shorter route to your destination that doesn't involve looping.
- michaelt 11y agoIf you look at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paternoster_animated.gif https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paternoster_animated... presumably, as the open-fronted compartments pass over the top of the mechanism, the red drive chain is exposed to people in the cabin. If you watch the video in the guardian article labelled "the loop: from the top" you see an exposed chain that looks easily strong enough to take off a few fingers without stopping. You could probably come up with an overlapping arrangement of guards, of course. And presumably anyone riding one of these things already knows not to put their limbs into trap points - I couldn't say if the danger of trapping at the top is any greater than the danger of trapping at one of the floors. Rescue might also be difficult if there's a power cut or breakdown.
- tiatia 11y agohttps://helixator.wordpress.com/ https://helixator.wordpress.com/
- jlg23 11y agoThe real WTF here is "Nahles claimed she had failed to read the small print in the new law restricting the use of paternosters, saying had she done so she would not have signed off on it." A minister with a huge office, lots of aids and access to a scientific and legal research group considers that an adequate statement? Until now I thought the main qualification for German politicians would be to never have held a normal job in real life and involvement in a party's youth organization since the age of 14 at least - I guess I have to add "substandard reading comprehension" to that list.
- userbinator 11y agoSearch for 'klamrisk' to find a rather... infamous warning sign showing what not to do in one of these. That sign also turned into somewhat of a minor meme amongst the demoscene community several years ago (it even turned into a game: http://www.linusakesson.net/games/klamrisk/index.php http://www.linusakesson.net/games/klamrisk/index.php ).