Up, Down, Across

We are told in the introductory panel of this unusual and interesting exhibit that the ubiquitous people movers of its title log more passenger miles each year than automobiles, airplanes, or trains. It is estimated that the world's elevators, escalators, and moving sidewalks collectively move the equivalent of the earth's population every three days—a figure that some of us might question when we consider the assembled inhabitants of China, India, and what used to be the USSR. Moreover, we learn that the moving sidewalk, a mode of transport that most of us would regard as having been introduced within living memory, actually appeared at several late-nineteenth-century world's fairs. These devices now are found principally at airports, enabling the building of those annoyingly long "finger" subterminals—referred to in the exhibit, somewhat curiously, as "horizontal skyscrapers."

Archaeology · Architectural engineering · China · Elevator · Icon · Pedestrian · Population · Sociology · Telecommunications · Train · Transport engineering · Aerospace Engineering · Computer Science · Demography · Engineering · History · Photography and Visual Culture