A time-lapse video of a man trapped in a lift for 41 hours has become an internet hit after surveillance camera footage emerged of the event which occurred nearly a decade ago.

"After a certain period of time I knew that I was in pretty big trouble because it was the weekend,'' Nicholas White said today on ABC-TV's Good Morning America.

Video of his ordeal on October 15, 1999, in a lift in New York's McGraw-Hill building was posted online to accompany an article in today's edition of The New Yorker magazine.

It had been viewed more than 280,000 times on YouTube by this morning.

Mr White said he understood why the video has captured people's attention: So many have wondered what they would do if it happened to them.

Edited to a soundtrack of classical piano music, the video shows him pacing, trying to climb the walls, lying down, curled up in a foetal position, prying apart the doors. (He said he relieved himself down the shaft when the doors were open.) Mr White sued the managers of the skyscraper and the lift maintenance company and won an undisclosed settlement.

He was a production manager for Business Week when he left his office about 11 pm on a Friday for a cigarette break.

It was never determined exactly why the lift stopped although there was talk of a power dip