Wow...just when I thought I was cooling off about TSSC again, I remembered this story.

The second FHE I went to as a non-member had the video about the amazing Salt Lake City temple. I've always loved architecture, and still think the temple is a beautiful building...but when I heard the old "workers built shafts not knowing they'd later house elevators" story, I was amazed! It was the very first thing that got me interested in TSSC, and started my way to taking the discussions.

Now, naturally, all it takes is a quick internet search to discover that:

A) The SLC Temple took 40 years to build, and was finished in 1893.
B) The Otis Elevator Company sold its first elevator in 1853, and had over 2000 elevators in use by the 1870s.
C) Unless nobody involved in the construction of the temple had any outside contact with the world for the entire 40-year construction period, there's no way they "didn't know what the shafts were for".
D) Yet another "miraculous" story passed on by an official church video is complete and total BULLSHIT.

If they would have had the City Creek mall built back then, they could have used that revenue to install the elevators from the very beginning. :)

to the basement(?) because they had forgotten to provide locker rooms for people to change into their Temple duds. Talk about a lack of inspiration!

So that during the last days and all the earthquakes that would be happening the rollers were designed to keep the temple from collapsing.

Also heard the elevator story.

They could just roll the temple to the next promised land.

Heard the elevator story years ago and inwardly laughed. I looked up elevators online. The concept, of course, even preceded Otis.

The Egyptians had manual elevators. Next.

Actually published by BYU:

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,453653,453942#msg-453942

We learned in grade school about Thomas Jefferson using dumbwaiters. It would take a real hick (which is probably what the mormons used for construction) to not know about dumbwaiters, or even use the shafts during construction for getting things to the top.

Yeah, my father told me the gem about the temple elevators, and he has a college degree. There's really no excuse for it.

I expressed my anger about this to the TBM friend who brought me to the FHE where I saw that video, and included links to the Otis Elevator timeline. Naturally, he ignored my questions and responded to something else in my message instead.

Yup, heard that one in the '70's, along with BY being a genius by laying SLC with letter/number street grid. Also that carbon-dating can be off by 14,000 years (can't remember what that was supposed to disprove, either Earth older than 6,000 years or people in the americas before Lehi/Jaredite types.) Also heard that both Egyptians and Aztecs did brain surgery so it proves there was cross-ocean contact.

This could be a whole new thread on FPR's...

I'm ashamed that it took me so long to double-check that. I heard it in a temple square tour when I was a kid, and I think it was 3 decades later before I thought to look it up.

I hadn't realized official mormon "leadership" expected smart people to swallow it whole.

Sometimes it's hard to know if we should laugh or cry.

The Otis Safety Elevator was an improvement over existing elevators such that if the cable snapped they didn't fall to the bottom of the shaft. Elevators were in existence BEFORE 1853, the year the Otis Safety Elevator was invented.


As far as inspiration goes in the building of the Salt Lake Temple, the following is from "On This Day in Mormon History"

"May 11, 1886 - First Seventy President Abraham H. Cannon writes: "There have been two windows left out of west end of the Salt Lake Temple through an error of the architect which will most likely necessitate the taking down of the wall for 20 ft. Order was given yesterday to stop laying stone now until a decision was reached about this matter. It is a most egregious error. ""

Has our beloved Stake President say how he got his name?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternoster