The first of five clues. Each one below gives a little more away.
I was patented as a fairground amusement, not as transport.
My first outing was at Coney Island, where people queued to ride me for fun.
When I fail I trap nobody. I simply become stairs.
My name was a trademark until the company lost it for being too popular.
The moving staircase in the shopping centre.
Escalator
Otis lost the trademark in 1950 because the word had become the ordinary name for the thing — the same fate that carried aspirin, trampoline and escalator into plain English.
Jesse Reno patented his in 1892 as an inclined belt for amusement, and installed it at Coney Island, where a quarter of a million people rode it in a fortnight for entertainment rather than transport. Charles Seeberger's rival design added flat steps, and Otis eventually bought both. The word was Seeberger's trademark, and Otis lost it in 1950 after a court found the company had used it generically in its own advertising — the same route by which aspirin, trampoline and yo-yo passed into ordinary English. A stalled escalator remains a staircase, which is more than a lift can say.
Reading five clues at once is not the game. In the real thing they arrive one at a time and every wrong guess costs an hour. Play mystery #57 · today's mystery · the vault
Previous: mystery #56. Next: mystery #58. Or try #22, #23, #24, #25, #26, #27.