Here at Los Angeles Garage Door & Gates, garage technology is our bread and butter. Our expert technicians are skilled at the in’s and out’s of installing, repairing, and maintaining garage doors, garage door openers, and garage door accessories. While many people may not realize it, garage doors are actually quite history-spanning pieces of technology, with origins way back from the contemporary and high tech models that we professionally provide our customers. In this brief blog post, our expert garage door installation team will detail some of the storied history of garage door technology.

Origin of Garages

Garages were first invented when automobiles started becoming more widely utilized by families in the early 20th century. Families needed space to protect their new vehicles from the elements – and at the beginning, only the very rich owned cars which they stored in repurposed carriage houses, which were sometimes rented out. When cars became more affordable, there was more need for mass parking spaces, and the carriage houses became obsolete for holding all the new vehicles – not to mention the fact that they smelled from the domestic creatures and livestock that were often housed within them! This led to the beginning of the garage door industry.

First Home Garages

The beginning of home garages were modeled off carriage houses, with barn-like doors that would quickly wear out due to continued use. Soon, more durable garage doors were invented in order to keep garages secure – and garage doors were made more compact to save space. C.G. Johnson invented the first overhead garage door in 1921, a door that folded upwards like the contemporary overhead doors we know so well. These doors were initially manually lifted, and were very heavy – which is why Johnson created the electrical garage door opener in 1926. This was the start of his Overhead Garage Door Corporation, and his traveling across the country to promote his handy inventions – and his subsequent tendering of distributors across the nation, which in turn fostered competing companies like Wayne Door (the ancestor of the modern Wayne Dalton Garage Doors company) and Cornell Iron Works. Then, as time went on, these companies continued improving their own products utilizing modern technology and making doors more durable, strong, seamless, compact, and long-lasting; leading to the fantastically affordable and reliable garage doors that we at Los Angeles Garage Door & Gate provide to our valued community every day!