New York, London or Tokyo — all modern cities in fact own their existence to a bearded Vermonter named Elisha Otis. Otis took a job in Yonkers, New York, for a bedstead manufacturer who needed help in transporting heavy materials to the second floor of his factory. Otis already knew something about elevators: they were already around, albeit in crude from, in various parts of the world. His genius lay in understanding the human fears of using one.

On this day, March 22, in 1857 the first public elevator was installed at the fashionable E.V. Haughwout department store on 488 Broadway in New York.

Otis demonstrated the safety of his elevator three years earlier at the Crystal Palace in New York. He built a full-size working model of his elevator design and stepped inside. The elevator began its ascent, and at Otis’s signal the rope holding the elevator was cut. The elevator plunged, very briefly, before a failsafe system engaged and stopped the freefall. Otis emerged unharmed, showing his invention was completely safe, even in case of failure.