The industrial revolution of the late18th and early 19th centuries profoundly altered life in the western world. The properties of steam were discovered, the concept of horse-power as a unit of mechanical work was introduced and the laws of thermodynamics were established. In 1841 a Cambridge university professor Robert Willis, published the first text book on the principals of mechanical engineering. This book contained, amongst other things, the first comprehensive analysis of every kind of gear. It then become possible for everyone involved in machine tool making to experiment and develop from a much more advanced base of knowledge. The first lifts were steam driven and the mechanism was much like the conventional windlass arrangement used on ships. Although these machines were popular for over thirty years, easy to maintain and reliable, they were nevertheless slow and cumbersome. The first practical demonstration of the motive power of electricity took place at the Vienna international exhibition in 1873. Seven years later Werner Siemens demonstrated the first electric lift at an exhibition in Mannheim, however the mechanism was located below the platform of the car and did not prove to be a very satisfactory arrangement. It was not until 1889 that Otis and a Frenchman, Chretien, displayed much more sophisticated and reliable electrically driven machines.

Escalator, a contrived word invented by Otis Elevator Company to describe the moving stairway they had developed with Charles D. Seeberger, was rejected as a noun by the United States Patent Office in the official specification of 1892. It was accordingly registered as an official trademark in 1900. Half a century later, the patent office reversed its thinking and ruled that, because the word escalator was in common usage, the noun created by Otis could henceforth be placed in the public domain. Matching the prestige they gained from installing the awkward elevators in the Eiffel Tower 11 years previously, Otis installed the first step-type escalator for public use at the Paris Exposition of 1900. In the following year it was refitted at Gimbel's department store in Philadelphia.