Escalators don't escalate you

Disclaimer:
Please do not take anything I say in this post or on this blog seriously. Ever.

At some point in time, the escalator must have been the pinnacle of modern technology. What are they to us now? A bad idea.

My point, friends, is that escalators are the epitome of laziness. This is true in more than one way. Here's the first. The escalator was lazy engineering. They literally just slapped a motor on some stairs. Just kidding. The real story is much funnier than that. Here it is:

On March 15 1892, Jesse Reno patented his moving stairs or inclined elevator as he called it. In 1895, Jesse Reno created a new novelty ride at Coney Island from his patented design, a moving stairway that elevated passengers on a conveyor belt at a 25 degree angle.

I did not make that up. It was an amusement park ride. Wow. Those were some boring amusement parks, first of all. Secondly, it was a ride! It was meant to entertain people, not to make all people of future generations lazy. Might I also mention that the name he used was lazy. An "Inclined Elevator" he called it? How unoriginal (No disrespect. I'm sure it was a fun ride). Also, are we really showing proper honor to this gentleman by turning a passion of his, a passion best expressed in the form of an amusement park ride (something entertaining, exciting even) into the most mundane thing we do at a mall or airport? If you are anything like me, once you're on that thing you can't wait to get off. Those rubbery moving railings probably have Bird Flu and stuff on them. Yuck!

Going back on topic, the second reason escalators are the epitome of laziness is obvious, what they do to people. I think that when they originally put the exactor into the first shopping mall or airport, their intention was to get people up faster, not slower. I don't think they were intended to replace the swinging of our lower appendages back and forth entirely if we wanted to move up or down a level.

Also, what's up with elevators? I don't mean to say you're lazy if you use an elevator, only if you use it instead of stairs.You see, I work in an office building. An office building with four floors. Everyone I know in this building works on the second floor. Every day I see people take the elevator instead of the stairs. What's ironic about this is that the elevator is actually a further walk from the parking lot than the stairs are.

Sigh... What is this world coming to? 

Written by individual contributor 

Lane Fries (a.k.a. Dr. Freeze)