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Foreword

Shortly after the publication of the first edition of the American Standard Safety Code for Elevators in 1920, requests for a handbook or manual covering the inspection of elevators were received by the Sectional Committee (A17) on a Safety Code for Elevators, Dumbwaiters, and Escalators, which had prepared the code. A subcommittee was therefore appointed to prepare such a manual. Cities, states, insurance and elevator maintenance companies, and the Federal Government supplied the committee with material prepared by their most experienced inspectors. This mass of material was carefully considered by the committee and this, together with much of the wide inspection experience of the subcommittee itself (almost every member of which has had wide experience in the inspection of elevators in the field as in the testing of safety equipment) was used in the preparation of a tentative draft. This was given extensive circulation, and the resulting comments and criticisms were carefully considered in the preparation of the final draft. This draft was unanimously approved by the Sectional Committee, the sponsors, and by the ASA as a Recommended American Practice and was published in 1937 simultaneously with the third edition of the code.

This first edition of the manual has been well received and widely used. Since its publication the third edition of the code has been amended by the 1942 supplement. The present revision of the manual was undertaken to bring it in line with the code as amended to include new material covering the inspection of escalators and much additional material on elevator inspection. .

This second edition of the manual was approved by the Sectional Committee, by the three sponsor organizations, and on October 22, 1945, by the American Standards Association as an American Standard Practice.

Until his death in October, 1944, Mr. D. L. Lindquist while not a member of the Subcommittee on Inspectors' Manual was of material assistance in the preparation of this manual.