On January 15, 1861, Elisha Graves Otis received U.S. Patent No. 31,128 on a Hoisting Apparatus (an elevator, to non patent attorneys).

His achievement was not so much the lifting people and things — this had been done for some time — but providing a brake so that if the rope snapped, the passengers wouldn’t plunge to their deaths (ironic for a man whose middle name was Graves).