Anyone know what this is?

[Palehorse]

I do, but I want to see if anyone else here does:(This particular one used to be in Marina Tower in Chicago)

[Locutus]

No clue. 

[Palehorse]

Here's the "modern" version, in use in Europe today and I would assume not nearly as dangerous as the one depicted.

http://notesofnomads.com/paternoster-elevator/

They called it a "man-lift" in the local vernacular, and I encountered this beast (and exact duplicate of the one pictured above) as the new Technical Director of the Indianapolis Mill I had been transferred to.

The place was 4 stories high and the paper machine ate up every inch of it; but the sprawling facility surrounding it had floors at each level upon which various types of work took place outside of the paper making process. Beneath the paper machine there were three sub-basements and an intake holding pond, and I was responsible for all the activities taking place from the sub basements to the top floor.

My lab and adjoining office where on the second story, and I had been using the stairs for a month before the maintenance manager pointed this thing out to me and showed my how to use it. Dangerous as hell.

It was a giant vertical convener belt with platforms fasted to it every 15 feet or so around it's entire length. Up on one side, down on the other. Between floors you were inside a tube exactly like the one in the picture, and it was very easy to forget where you were at along the way. All members of management had to wear radios exactly like the ones the police wear, because the place was so big it was impossible to find anyone when you needed to, and too noisy for the paging system to work. If you had to reply to someone while in transit on this thing you could miss a floor or get so disoriented you'd reach the end, top or bottom, and risked death or severe injury by getting thrown into the well at the bottom and pummeled to death by the following platforms, or thrown over the top, slammed into a wall, or back down the tube to be pummeled but he following platforms. For that  reason the signs at the top and bottom were posted high on the bottom, low and high on the top, and were bright and everywhere at both ends. No means of stopping it outside of cutting the power, and it ran constantly.

Deaths had happened within its long history of use in that facility. (The place was there before the City of Indianapolis ever existed, as were the building and paper machine itself.) The old timers there had some real tales to tell about that thing, and most of them refused to use it at all.

It was among the most dangerous industrial means of moving between floors and was a wicked alternative to the stairs that held a very real threat of death or injury. In my time there three new employees had ridden it to severe injury but avoided death. I rode it religiously as did the maintenance manager.

Someone posted that picture on social media and I was the first to know exactly what it was.    That thing was in use until the mill closed in 2000. I was astonished that the city and OSHA allowed us to keep it in operation.

[me]

That older one looks kind of scary for sure.

[Purplelady1040]

Sure looks scary.

[AbbyTC]

Very interesting, Palehorse.  Thanks for sharing!