Otis Worldwide
American elevator and escalator manufacturer
Otis Worldwide Corporation, doing business as its former legal name Otis Elevator Company and styled as OTIS, is an American company that develops, manufactures and markets elevators, escalators, moving walkways, and related equipment.
Based in Farmington, Connecticut, U.S., Otis is the world's largest manufacturer of vertical transportation systems, principally focusing on elevators, escalators, and moving walkways. It currently has a market share of 18%. The company pioneered the development of the "safety elevator", invented by Elisha Otis in 1852, which used a special mechanism that locked the elevator car in place against hoisting rope failure.
The Otis Elevator Company was acquired by United Technologies in 1976, and was spun off as an independent company 44 years later in April 2020.
History
The booming elevator market
In 1852, Elisha Otis invented the safety elevator, which was automatically halted in a hoisting rope failure. After a demonstration at the 1853 New York World's Fair, the elevator industry established credibility.
Otis founded the Otis Elevator Company in Yonkers, New York, in 1853. When he died in 1861 his sons Charles and Norton formed a partnership and continued the business. During the American Civil War, Otis elevators were in high demand throughout the United States due to the shipment of war materials.
“Otis Worldwide” enters the record as american elevator and escalator manufacturer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Otis, Worldwide and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1134069. VIAF identifies the subject as 128979328. The Library of Congress control number is n50080940. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1852, 1976, 2020 and 1853.
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This entry incorporates text from “Otis Worldwide” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.