[GOLDFINDER2 (OP)]

WHO INVENTED THE GARAGE DOOR OPENER?

[Don_1]

C G Johnson, of Hartford City, Indiana in 1926 is accredited with the design of an up-and-over garage door using an electric motor. Counterbalances provided the bulk of the lift, so the motor needed only have a small power rating.

It was not popularised until after WWII when the Chicago based Era Meter Co. began production.

[cheryl j]

How come when I was a kid, airplanes flying overhead would sometimes make electric garage doors open or close? This was in the 60s/70s.

[damocles]

How come when I was a kid, airplanes flying overhead would sometimes make electric garage doors open or close? This was in the 60s/70s.

Did it ever happen with other loud noises/vibrations?
My thinking is that maybe the door was too finely counterbalanced, and that fully open/fully closed were only shallow potential wells.

(Or maybe the door, on hearing the plane, got an ambition to fly, and found that the open position was as near as it could get?)[]

[RD]

How come when I was a kid, airplanes flying overhead would sometimes make electric garage doors open or close? This was in the 60s/70s.

Radio-signal from the aircraft triggering the wireless garage door opener ?

[Armstrong]

The electric overhead garage door opener was invented by C.G. Johnson in 1926 in Hartford City, Indiana.

[syhprum]

An early radio altimeter develop in WWII operated on 420mHz that's what opened the garage doors a similar device was used as a tail warning radar in fighter aircraft and three of these were installed in the nuclear bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki.