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Automatic Door

An automatic door, also known as an auto door, is a door that opens automatically, usually on sensing the approach of a person.

In the 1st century AD, mathematician Heron of Alexandria in Roman Egypt invented the first known automatic door. He described two different automatic door applications. The first application used heat from a fire lit by the city's temple priest. After a few hours atmospheric pressure built up in a brass vessel causing it to pump water into adjacent containers. These containers acted as weights that – through a series of ropes and pulleys – would open the temple's doors at about the time people were to arrive for prayer. Heron used a similar application to open the gates to the city.[1]

In 1931, engineers Horace H. Raymond and Sheldon S. Roby of the tool and hardware manufacturer Stanley Works designed the first model of an optical device triggering the opening of an automatic door. The invention was patented and installed in Wilcox's Pier Restaurant in West Haven, Connecticut for the benefit of waiters carrying plates of food and drink. The entire system plus installation was sold for $100.[2][3]

In 1954, Dee Horton and Lew Hewitt invented the first sliding automatic door. The automatic door used a mat actuator. In 1960, they co-founded Horton Automatics Inc and placed the first commercial automatic sliding door on the market.[4]

​Lowestoft (/ˈloʊ(ɪ)stɒft, ˈloʊstəf/) is an English North Sea coast town and civil parish in the county of Suffolk.[3] On the edge of The Broads, it is the most easterly UK settlement, 110 miles (177 km) north-east of London, 38 miles (61 km) north-east of Ipswich and 22 miles (35 km) south-east of Norwich. As the main town in the district of East Suffolk, it had an estimated 73,775 inhabitants in 2018.[1][1] A port town, it developed out of the fishing industry and as a seaside resort with wide, sandy beaches. As its fisheries declined, oil and gas exploitation in the southern North Sea in the 1960s added to its development, alongside nearby Great Yarmouth. These roles have declined, but it is developing as a regional centre of the renewable energy industry.

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