Our elevator and escalator business dates back to the 1860s and 1880s when our predecessor companies were founded in Hamburg and Stuttgart, Germany. They develop and install the first vertical conveyor for people called Paternoster in 1890 and Germany’s first escalator in 1906. In the 1950s, former Thyssen Industrie acquires a stake in these companies.
After 1970, the acquisition of several smaller elevator manufacturers in Germany and Western Europe, combined with the construction of an elevator factory in Neuhausen near Stuttgart, leads to major developments in elevators and escalators.