What does 'you had to press the floor’s number on a panel in the hallway before you got in' in?

Question

I had lunch with Murdoch the day after the story appeared. We met outside his office, on the eighth floor of the News Corp. building, and rode the elevator down to an executive dining room on the third floor. The elevator car didn’t have call buttons; you had to press the floor’s number on a panel in the hallway before you got in.

Answer 1

Those are the new "destination elevators"

The trick is that everyone who wants to go to a specific floor pushes the button for that floor and the system fills up an elevator for one of the floors from those people. Others who have selected other floor numbers go in a different elevator. The goal is to speed up travel by not stopping at a bunch of floors along the way. Those new elevators are rumored to go for about $4 million each.

Of course if your are a major executive your elevator can be set to take only you all by yourself to that floor while the peasants are waiting for an elevator to fill for their own floors.

The peasants by the way are getting wise to the idea that if you push the button ten times it will think there are ten people waiting and will send that elevator right up for that floor even if it is just you on it.

This is a brand new concept that they are just starting to deliver and is not just an elevator lacking inside buttons. It is an elevator that devotes itself to a crowd for a chosen floor so they can get there faster. In theory the new way gets everyone upstairs without as big a delay using fewer elevators to accomplish that.

Answer 2

I agree with the other answers. Can't say I've ever seen an elevator like that before though. I once stayed at a hotel with magnetic pass cards rather than keys that were assigned to each room. To get onto the elevator you had to swipe the card over the reader. But - because I was on the 8th floor, I could only use the elevator to take me to ground floor and 8th floor, nowhere else. It was a good security idea, but a little annoying - my friend was on the 4th floor, so if we wanted to meet up we both had to go to the ground floor and then head up to one of the rooms!

Answer 3

I think it means that the control for the elevator is outside the elevator. Like the floor buttons are outside not IN the elevator

Answer 4

Instead of calling the elevator by the usual up/down buttons, you had to indicate the floor you wanted to go to first. This called the elevator and would take you to only that floor.

Answer 5

It means that the buttons were on the wall outside of the elevator car, not inside it.

Answer 6

It's a very old one that you might not want to ride next time.