The garage sure has come a long way since its early years in which garages were composed of slabs of wood and metal. In the early 1900 we saw the creation of large parking lots which resembles the parking lots of today. These were used to house all those new fancy cars. With time people wanted convenience, so they resorted to converting their horse stalls into home garages. In 1912 we see the creation of a new type of outbuilding, one which was completely geared towards the storage of your car.
We see some great advancement in garage door technology in 1921 with C.G. Johnson’s invention of the overhead door. Instead of opening outwards these doors could be lifted upwards, folding parallel to the garage ceiling. These new doors were very helpful when it came time for winter. One did not need to shovel their walkway in order to open their doors. In 1926 we see another great advancement. The same Mr. Johnson invented the electric door opener. This was of great help to those who had trouble lifting the heavy wooden doors.
And then for a few decades not much has changed. Yes there has been a great amount of changes in the materials used. Anything from plastic, wood, metal, composites have been used to make better and cheaper doors. We now have a wide array of colors we can use as well. With the electric door came many accidents with children. Children fascinated with the mechanism would sometimes get pinned by the closing doors. With these accidents came the idea of using sensors with garage doors. These sensors could detect if someone was in the pathway of the closing door by using electronic eyes or by using pressure sensors that were added to the bottom of garage doors. If any of these sensors were triggered garage doors would automatically reopen.
The newest tech company to focus on garage doors is Google owned Nest Lab. Following the internet of things” trend, Nest Lab has created a way of integrating your systems. Nest labs, the maker of smart thermostats and smoke detectors has set their eyes on improving your garage door system. They have released a toolkit which allows other companies to make products compatible with Nest’s smart home devices. Numerous garage door companies are getting on board, you will soon be able to signal your thermostat to turn on or off by opening or closing the garage door.
It will be interesting to see what new technology and ideas will emerge in the following years. Hudson Valley Over Head Doors and their Germantown Garage Doors and LaGrange Garage Doors services have made it their business to keep up with what is new in this field. For more information contact Hudson Valley Overhead Door and Installers today.