C.G. Johnson
(Inventor of the Overhead Door and Electric Door Opener)
With such a historic election this past month it got me to thinking about the history of what I do for a living. I work for New England Overhead Door, Inc. in Hopedale, MA.
For over 10 years now, I have worked as an administrative assistant in the overhead door business. And I’ll be honest; before I started here I didn’t even know what an overhead door was. My family had always referred to them as garage doors. Who knew they were one in the same? I certainly didn’t.
So again, it got me to thinking about how and why garage doors were invented. And to tell the truth, I found it quite interesting.
While today, garages are mostly used for storage of vehicles or other necessities of life, outbuildings as they were known in the early 1900’s were used for storing a horse and buggy. They were often also called carriage houses.
In the early days of cars, many chose to store their car and horse and buggy together. However, those with cars in the early days were those of an affluent society and shall we just say, storing a horse and buggy with a car was just shall we say a stink. Hence came the need to store cars elsewhere.
Today’s modern day parking lots were actually the first garages, but with only one level. People would pay $15-$20 a month to store their cars in a heated garage that was maintained by the owner. This system worked for a time, but then there became too many cars for the garages to handle.
People began looking for options closer and/or more convenient place to store their vehicles. The carriage house had worked before, if only they could get rid of the smelly horses.
“In 1921, a young man named C.G. Johnson invented the upward lifting garage door and changed the course of the garage door’s place in history.” * C.G. Johnson was the founder of what is known today as Overhead Door.
See his picture above.
And five years later, this same gentleman invented what is known as the first electric garage door opener to assist those who had a hard time lifting the heavy wooden door.
1 comment:
Yes, Overhead Door launched the opener. Interestingly, through my research there are many patents for other garage door openers that were patented in the teens, but none apparently were commercially viable. I researched many different designs of garage door openers which appear in my book, Your Garagenous Zone: Innovative Ideas for the Garage.
Some of these designs that I discovered worked and some I sure were 'newfangled' as they surly were referred to back in the early 20th century. Some designs did not appear to be very efficient.
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