Alexander Miles: Black Inventor Who Patented Automatic Elevator Safety Doors in 1887
Alexander Miles was a pioneering Black inventor whose work dramatically improved elevator safety and helped make vertical transportation safer in buildings around the world. Born in 1838 in Ohio, Miles came of age during a period of rapid industrial growth and transformative technological innovation. Though opportunities for Black inventors were limited by racism and unequal access, Miles pursued his curiosity and mechanical ingenuity with determination.
The inspiration for Miles’s breakthrough came from observing a common yet dangerous problem: elevator shafts left open at different floors. Earlier elevators often required someone to manually open and close doors on each floor, a risky task that led to serious accidents when passengers entered or exited. Recognizing the potential for tragedy, Miles focused on creating a better method to protect riders and workers in tall buildings.
In 1887, Alexander Miles was awarded a patent for an improved elevator door mechanism that automatically opened and closed the elevator shaft doors by using flexible, automatic operations triggered when the elevator reached a floor. His design included a system of connected doors that moved in unison — the car doors and the floor doors — improving safety and reliability. This innovation significantly reduced the risk of falls into unguarded shafts and helped standardize elevator safety features that are still in use today.
Miles’s invention did more than make elevators safer; it contributed to the wider acceptance and development of multi-story buildings in urban areas. With safer elevators, architects and engineers could design taller structures, fundamentally changing the shape of modern cities and making high-rise work and living spaces feasible.
Despite the transformative nature of his work, Alexander Miles did not always receive immediate recognition from the mainstream press of his era. More recently, historians and engineers have celebrated his contributions as foundational to modern elevator safety. Today, Alexander Miles is remembered as a thoughtful problem-solver whose innovation saved lives and helped shape urban development in the United States and beyond. His legacy highlights how Black inventors helped build the technological frameworks of modern society.
