Otis Elevator Company

Otis’s official history identifies 1853 as the year Elisha Graves Otis sold his first elevator after inventing the elevator safety brake. The mechanism addressed the risk of a hoisting rope breaking, and the company’s timeline records Otis’s first passenger elevator installation in 1857 at New York City’s five-story E.V. Haughwout Building. The safety device helped make vertical passenger movement commercially credible as cities and buildings grew upward. [1]

The 2025 annual report describes Otis as an elevator and escalator manufacturer, installer, service provider and modernizer. Its New Equipment segment designs, manufactures, sells and installs passenger and freight elevators, escalators and moving walkways, while its Service segment maintains, repairs and modernizes equipment from Otis and other manufacturers. For 2025, the report shows net sales of $14.431 billion: $4.989 billion in New Equipment and $9.442 billion in Service. [2]

Otis separated from United Technologies and became independent again in 2020, according to its historical timeline. The current company says it serves more than 200 countries and territories, moves about 2.5 billion people each day, and maintains more than 2.5 million customer units worldwide. Its current systems include connected monitoring through the Otis ONE platform, while the 2025 filing reports more than 1,400 branches and offices, 11 research-and-development centers and 16 manufacturing facilities. The corporate office is in Farmington, Connecticut. [1] [2] [3]