SAUGUS — In 1859, Nathan Ames secured a patent for his invention, the revolving stairs — the progenitor of the escalator.
Born in 1826 in Roxbury, N.H., Ames relocated to Saugus Center and attended college at Harvard.
While at Harvard, Ames published a book using the pseudonym Señor Alguno. The book, “Childe Harvard: A Romance of Cambridge,” was a parody of Lord Byron’s “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.”
Later on, Ames published another book, this time using his own name. Titled “Pirates’ Glen and Death Rock,” the book covered the mythology surrounding Dungeon Rock in Lynn.
After graduating from Harvard, Ames became a patent solicitor, gaining patents for many new inventions.
“I claim, first, arranging steps or stairs upon an endless belt, or in any manner equivalent, and placing them over rollers, substantially as described, so as to form a revolving flight of stairs which may be used both as a common flight and an elevator,” Ames said in an outline for Patent #25,076.
Ames described his invention of revolving stairs as “steps or stairs on an inclined endless belt, chains, or ropes.” Alternatively, he described the process of “attaching the stairs or steps by links or joints,” both of which he said would “form an endless inclined flight of steps or stairs which are placed on, over, or around rollers so that the stairs or steps shall serve as elevators when motion is transmitted to the rollers.”
He also held patents for a new type of grater, a polygraph machine that would be able to write “two or more letters simultaneously,” and a combination fork, spoon, and knife utensil — a progenitor of the spork.
Ames dies in 1865. While his revolving stairs were never built for demonstrative or commercial purposes during his life, his idea lives on as a piece of equipment that is now used every day by people all over the world.
