953 nut 57,297 #1 Posted March 19 National Automatic Door Day is celebrated on March 19 every year. Doors are the (safe and entertaining) gateway to all sorts of places, so it’s only fitting that we celebrate the mighty automatic door on this day. As the name signifies, this day is to celebrate the automated doorways that guard the entrance to multiple places — hospitals, buildings and malls being some of them. Another aim of this day — unite manufacturers and others across the automatic door industry. The Ancient Greeks didn’t just give us the Olympics — they also gifted the world with automatic doors. At least this is what historians believe. According to them, Greek mathematician and engineer Heron of Alexandria wrote about an automatic door-adjacent mechanism that was used to open up temple gates sometime around the 1st century A.D. According to descriptions in Heron’s books — named “Pneumatica” — the mechanism used heat from fires to build pressure in brass vessels. This pressure forced water from one container into an adjacent one, simultaneously tugging on attached ropes and pulleys to open up the temple doors to which this whole contraption was attached, that too just in time for prayers. Heron also apparently used this mechanism to open up city gates. Quite a while later — in the 17th century, to be exact — Emperor Yang of Sui constructed a foot sensor-activated automatic door in the royal library, according to historian Joseph Needham’s book, “Science and Civilization in China,” written in 1986. It was only in the 20th century that the world got its first real automatic doors. This invention began with American engineers Horace Raymond and Sheldon Roby, who designed an automatic door in 1931. This device was later installed in Wilcox’s Pier Restaurant in Connecticut, U.S., and would open for waiters carrying plates of food and drink. Still, the world recognizes American engineers Dee Horton and Lew Hewitt as the brains behind today’s automatic doors. Their invention, created in 1954, used sensors hidden inside mats on the floor to ‘tell’ the doors someone was about to enter, and voila! The doors would open automatically. By 1960, these doors had entered the commercial market and eventually became more and more common. Large banks, hotels, and various public buildings began using automatic doors. Innovation marked the next few decades — motion sensors were invented, low-energy doors came around, access doors now took into account access for disabled people, and automatic doors went global. Automatic doors are everywhere around us now, opening and closing to safely permit or eject people from various buildings. 3 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
