New York: Grand Central, Elevators in Skyscrapers
From 1896 to 1900 Sprague served on the Commission for Terminal Electrification of the New York Central Railroad, including the Grand Central Terminal in New York City, where he designed a system of automatic train control to ensure compliance with trackside signals. He founded the Sprague Safety Control & Signal Corporation to develop and build this system. Along with William J. Wilgus, he designed the Wilgus-Sprague bottom contact third rail system used by the railroads leading into Grand Central Terminal.
During World War I, Sprague served on the Naval Consulting Board. Then, in the 1920s, he devised a method for safely running two independent elevators, local and express, in a single shaft, to conserve floor space. He sold this system, along with systems for activating elevator car safety systems when acceleration or speed became too great, to the Westinghouse Company.
Read more about this topic: Frank J. Sprague
Famous quotes containing the words grand, elevators and/or skyscrapers:
“We had heard of a Grand Fall on this stream, and thought that each fall we came to must be it, but after christening several in succession with this name, we gave up the search. There were more Grand or Petty Falls than I can remember.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The cigar-box which the European calls a “lift” needs but to be compared with our elevators to be appreciated. The lift stops to reflect between floors. That is all right in a hearse, but not in elevators. The American elevator acts like the man’s patent purge—it works”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Chicago—is—oh well a façade of skyscrapers facing a lake, and behind the façade every type of dubiousness.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)