Technology and Culture

abstract:

This article provides the first critical history of escalators on the London Underground railway and the ways their introduction reconfigured passengers' bodies. As the Underground became a coordinated and unitary technological system, its central Tube stations—particularly their elevators—created friction and exerted systemic drag. The Underground's executives initiated a major modernization program, replacing elevators with automatic escalators. Yet for the new technology to succeed, passengers had to learn certain actions, develop competencies, and acquire new corporeal habits. This article examines the dynamic regimes of instruction and surveillance that the Underground deployed to achieve these aims and assesses the outcome. Despite the assurance that the escalator would mechanize movement and overcome physiological variation, certain users found it discriminatory. While contemporary critics depicted the machine as an agent of dehumanization, beyond rush hour and at less busy stations, "escalator-legged" Londoners found more expressive and autonomous ways of moving.