EIAT Practice Test 10

From Amusement Ride to Moving Stairway

The escalator began as a ____1____ rather than a practical machine. In 1896, inventor Jesse Reno set up a moving incline on a Coney Island pier, and visitors found the ride so ____2____ that stores soon wanted machines of their own. The Otis Elevator Company later sold moving stairways under the name "Escalator," a word it had ____3____ as a trademark. ____4____, the name became so widely used for every moving stairway that the company eventually lost its legal claim to the word.