Excluding express elevators that skip entire banks of floors in high-rise towers, elevators will now stop at every floor, regardless of whether passengers wish to board or disembark. This system will alleviate the frustration felt by passengers bound to or from higher floors when others bound to or from lower floors interrupt their ride.-- snarfyguy, Feb 05 2003 Paternoster Lift http://www.dartford...in_hall_lifts.shtmlThe paternoster lift might soon be... [st3f, Oct 05 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004] banned... http://www.radio.cz/en/article/10709from the European Union. [st3f, Oct 05 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004] How about never stopping, just slowing it down to the point that people jump on and off, like a cable car?-- pluterday, Feb 05 2003 hmmm, a good way to encourage taking the stairs.-- rbl, Feb 05 2003 Just push all the buttons.-- lurch, Feb 05 2003 Oops. I only spellchecked the body - fixed now.-- snarfyguy, Feb 05 2003 Isn't this what is commonly known as a paternoster? (only they don't stop)(and don't have doors)(and probably contravene all kinds of modern health and safety standards)(link).-- st3f, Feb 05 2003 Did you vote for yourself because that sounds like a pretty bad idea to me.-- jeffman, Jul 24 2003 It's already been done. In areas with a high proportion of Jewish people, residential buildings have eleveators programmed for "Sabbath mode" (automatically stop at all floors) to allow the use of the elevators while conforming to the prohibition on performing useful work on the Sabbath. Elevators with regenerative braking switch to dynamic braking (dump the electricity into a resistor) in Sabbath mode for the same reason.
For obvious reasons, it's only done for residential buildings, not office buildings.-- rwolff, Jan 02 2005 Well it teaches patience one way or another... I like it :)-- xxobot, Sep 28 2007 The problem is that, when you're in a hurry, pressing the lift button harder or repeatedly has no effect. It's the bare- faced impassiveness of the lift that creates frustration.
So, make the lift respond to mutliple button-pressings, and in proportion to the force of the pressing. If you really hammer the button enough times, the lift will hasten to your floor, ignoring the less forceful requests of other would-be lift passengers.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Sep 28 2007 halfbakery