In 1852, Elisha Otis invented the safety elevator, which was automatically halted in a hoisting rope failure. After a demonstration at the 1853 New York World's Fair, the elevator industry established credibility.
Otis founded the Otis Elevator Company in Yonkers, New York, in 1853. When he died in 1861 his sons Charles and Norton formed a partnership and continued the business. During the American Civil War, Otis elevators were in high demand throughout the United States due to the shipment of war materials. In 1864, with the partnership of J.M. Alvord, the company became known as Otis Brothers & Co. In 1867, Otis opened a factory in Yonkers.
In 1925, the world's first fully automatic elevator, Collective Control, was introduced. In 1931, the company installed the world's first double-deck elevator at 70 Pine Street in New York City.
In the early 1950s, the company introduced "Autotronic", an electromechanical computer system for running a bank of high speed elevator cars, which could predict the traffic flows within a building at specific times of the day and deploy the cars efficiently.
Otis opened a factory in Bloomington, Indiana, in 1965.
1977 saw the introduction of "Elevonic" - the successor to Autotronic - which was the first solid state, digital microprocessor-based elevator control system.