Step into a large shop or office block and the door will open for you, no struggling with a door handle required. In an age of convenience we take it for granted but it was not until June 19, 1931 that the first modern automatic door was installed, at Wilcox’s Pier Restaurant in West Haven in Connecticut, courtesy of the Stanley Works company.
The great Greek engineer, Heron of Alexandria, was credited with inventing the first self-opening door, powered by heat from a fire, which caused atmospheric pressure to build up in a brass vessel which then pumped water into adjacent holding containers which acted as weights. Using a series of ropes and pulleys the doors of the temple could be opened when worshippers arrived for prayer. H G Wells described in When The Sleeper Wakes (1910) how two men walked up to an “apparently solid wall” that “rolled up with a snap” to allow them access before it closed again.
It took another twenty one years before Wells’ pipe dream became a reality. Placed between the kitchen and the dining room, the doors sprang open as soon as a photoelectric eye detected the approach of a person. “Through the invention”, reported the Hartford Courant, “there is no longer need for waitresses to kick open doors or use their hands for anything other than carrying in the trays.” The restaurant’s president wrote enthusiastically that “they are one of the most satisfactory pieces of equipment which we have ever installed … and have certainly speeded up the service of our waitresses.”
Automatic doors became more common in the 1960s using electric floor mat activation while the 1970s saw the development of motion detectors and the 1980s infrared presence sensors. The first automatic folding doors were invented in the 1990s and active infrared sensors were commonplace on all types of automatic doors.
They have come a long way since the waitress first walked through one at Wilcox’s Pier Restaurant.
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