Claim: Theophilus Van Kannel, who developed the revolving door, did so because of an aversion to holding open doors for women and other acts of chivalry.
Verdict: REFUTES

Retrieved passages:
title: Theophilus Van Kannel
text: Theophilus Van Kannel Theophilus Van Kannel (1841 – December 24, 1919) was an American inventor, known for inventing the revolving door, patented on August 7, 1888. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Van Kannel, who was recognized for his invention with the John Scott Medal by the Franklin Institute in 1889, founded the "Van Kannel Revolving Door Company", which eventually was bought out by the International Steel Company in 1907. International Steel Company is the parent company of International Revolving Door Company. He invented and owned Witching Waves, an amusement ride introduced at Luna Park, Coney Island, in 1907.

title: Theophilus Van Kannel
text: Van Kannel died in New York City of heart failure and was buried in West Park Cemetery, Cleveland, Ohio. Theophilus Van Kannel Theophilus Van Kannel (1841 – December 24, 1919) was an American inventor, known for inventing the revolving door, patented on August 7, 1888. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Van Kannel, who was recognized for his invention with the John Scott Medal by the Franklin Institute in 1889, founded the "Van Kannel Revolving Door Company", which eventually was bought out by the International Steel Company in 1907. International Steel Company is the parent company of International Revolving

title: Revolving door
text: no evidence that this claim is true. In 1889, the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia awarded the John Scott Legacy Medal to Van Kannel for his contribution to society. In 1899, the world's first wooden revolving door was installed at Rector's, a restaurant on Times Square in Manhattan, located on Broadway between West 43rd and 44th Streets. In 2007 Theophilus Van Kannel was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for this invention. Research into the air and energy exchanges associated with revolving door usage have been carried out on a few occasions. The earliest such study was carried out

title: Revolving door
text: direction. Theophilus Van Kannel, of Philadelphia, was granted US patent 387,571 on August 7, 1888 for a "Storm-Door Structure". The patent drawings filed show a three-partition revolving door. The patent describes it as having "three radiating and equidistant wings . . . provided with weather-strips or equivalent means to insure a snug fit". The door "possesses numerous advantages over a hinged-door structure . . .it is perfectly noiseless . . . effectually prevents the entrance of wind, snow, rain or dust . . ." "Moreover, the door cannot be blown open by the wind . . . there is no

title: Timeline of United States inventions (before 1890)
text: door has three or four doors that hang on a center shaft and rotate around a vertical axis within a round enclosure. In high-rise buildings, regular doors are hard to open because of air pressure differentials. In order to address this problem, the revolving door was invented in 1888 by Theophilus Van Kannel of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Van Kannel patented the revolving door on August 7, 1888. 1888 Ballpoint pen A ballpoint pen is a writing instrument with an internal ink reservoir and a sphere for a point. The internal chamber is filled with a viscous ink that is dispensed at

title: Revolving door
text: in 1936 by A. M. Simpson, who worked for the van Kannel revolving door company at the time. Simpson's study was followed by a study by Schutrum et al. in 1961, and more recently a study by van Schijndel et al. in 2003. These studies have focused on providing detailed measurements of the quantities of air and heat transferred inside the compartments of a door as it revolves. With the exception of the study by van Schijndel et al., which was purely theoretical, the measurements carried out for the other studies were used to provide design charts enabling engineers to

title: Revolving door
text: possibility of collision, and yet persons can pass both in and out at the same time." The patent further lists, "the excluding of noises of the street" as another advantage of the revolving door. It goes on to describe how a partition can be hinged so as to open to allow the passage of long objects through the revolving door. The patent itself does not use the term "revolving door". An urban legend, dating back to at perhaps 2008, claims that the invention was motivated by his phobia of opening doors for others, especially women; according to Snopes, there is

title: Revolving door
text: prevent people from bypassing fare payment. They are similarly used at large sports stadiums, theme parks, and other such venues, to allow pedestrians to exit freely, but not to enter without paying admission fees. These doors usually work mechanically, with the door panels constructed of horizontal bars which pass through a "wall" of interlacing (interdigitated) bars, allowing the door leaves to pass through, but blocking people from illegally entering through the exit. In 1942, the Cocoanut Grove, a popular nightclub in Boston, Massachusetts, went up in flames killing 492 people. One of the main reasons cited for the large number

title: Cocoanut Grove fire
text: douse the flames to approach the door. Later, after fire laws had tightened, it would become illegal to have only one revolving door as a main entrance without being flanked by outward opening doors with panic bar openers attached, or have the revolving doors set up so that the doors could fold against themselves in emergency situations. Other avenues of escape were similarly useless; side doors had been bolted shut to prevent people from leaving without paying. A plate glass window, which could have been smashed for escape, was boarded up and unusable as an emergency exit. Other unlocked doors,

title: Revolving door
text: of casualties was the single revolving door located at the entrance. As the mob of panicking patrons attempted to use the door as an escape it soon became jammed, trapping countless people between the door and the crowd pushing towards it. As a result, many people died from smoke inhalation, as they were not able to escape the burning nightclub. In 1943, it became a Massachusetts state law requirement to flank a revolving door with an outward swinging hinged door or to make the revolving door collapsible (so it becomes a double partition collapsing at 180°), allowing people to pass

title: Yaxley, Suffolk
text: for church doors. It has also been suggested that those wishing to fast, in honour of the Virgin Mary, from one of the six Lady Days, could choose one at random by catching one of six strings attached to named spokes. It was the Sexton who would set the two wheels revolving. The only other example in the country is claimed to be at Long Stratton in Norfolk Ashton Cottage in Church Lane, once the village school, was for many years the home of choreographer Frederick Ashton. He lived in Valley Farm House on Old Ipswich Road, until recently a

title: Revolving door
text: from above), allowing people to enter and exit only on the right side of the door. In left hand traffic countries such as Australia and New Zealand, revolving doors revolve clockwise, but door rotations are mixed in Britain. Direction of rotation is often enforced by the door governor mechanism, or by the orientation of the door seal brush (weatherstrips). Revolving doors can also be used as security devices to restrict entry to a single person at a time if the spacing between the doors is small enough. This is in contrast to a normal door which allows a second person

title: Von Duprin
text: persons from entering. This also inhibited persons on the inside from exiting. This was the case during the Iroquois Theatre Fire. All doors were locked and/or bolted which prevented patrons from exiting, causing most to be burned alive or succumb to smoke inhalation. Prinzler was astounded at the enormous and senseless loss of life that night. He sought a way for doors into public facilities to be locked from the outside, but to allow egress from the inside with minimal effort during an emergency. Prinzler tapped into the architectural engineering abilities of Henry H. DuPont to develop a product. In

title: Pet door
text: peek in: In an apparent early modern example of urban legend, the invention of the pet door was attributed to Isaac Newton (1642–1727) in a story (authored anonymously and published in a column of anecdotes in 1893) to the effect that Newton foolishly made a large hole for his adult cat and a small one for her kittens, not realizing the kittens would follow the mother through the large one. Two Newton biographers cite passages saying that Newton kept "neither cat nor dog in his chamber". Yet over 60 years earlier, a member of Newton's alma mater Trinity college, one

title: John Theophilus Desaguliers
text: also invented the blowing wheel which removed stale air from the House of Commons for many years. Desaguliers studied the movements made by the human body when working as a machine. He befriended the strong man, Thomas Topham, and although there is no firm evidence that he used Topham as a body guard, Desaguliers recorded several of the feats that he performed. Desaguliers was a parliamentary adviser to the board concerned with the first Westminster Bridge. This much-needed second crossing of the Thames was not completed until 1750, after his death, but construction work resulted in the demolition of Desaguliers’s

title: Revolving door
text: Revolving door A revolving door typically consists of three or four doors that hang on a central shaft and rotate around a vertical axis within a cylindrical enclosure. Revolving doors are energy efficient as they prevent drafts (acting as an airlock), thus decreasing the loss of heating or cooling for the building. At the same time, revolving doors allow large numbers of people to pass in and out. Around the central shaft of the revolving door, there are usually three or four panels called "wings" or "leaves." Large diameter revolving doors can accommodate strollers and wheeled luggage racks. The tallest

title: History of technology
text: doors, primarily as toys, which however featured many new useful mechanisms such as the cam and gimbals. In other fields, ancient Greek inventions include the catapult and the gastraphetes crossbow in warfare, hollow bronze-casting in metallurgy, the dioptra for surveying, in infrastructure the lighthouse, central heating, the tunnel excavated from both ends by scientific calculations, the ship trackway, the dry dock, and plumbing. In horizontal, vertical and transport, great progress resulted from the invention of the crane, the winch, the wheelbarrow and the odometer. Further newly created techniques and items were spiral staircases, the chain drive, sliding calipers and showers.

title: Revolving door
text: revolving door in Europe is currently 5.2m high with 4 wings. Some "revolving door displays" incorporate a small glass enclosure, permitting small objects such as sculpture, fashion mannequins, or plants to be displayed to pedestrians passing through. Such enclosures can either be mounted at the central pivot, or attached to the revolving door wings. The wings of revolving doors usually incorporate glass, to allow people to see and anticipate each other while passing through the door. Manual revolving doors rotate with pushbars, causing all wings to rotate. Revolving doors typically have a "speed control" (governor) to prevent people from spinning

title: Captain Beefheart
text: Van Vliet's approach, "[it was] impossible to tell him why things should be such and such a way. It seemed to me that if he was going to create a unique object, that the best thing for me to do was to keep my mouth shut as much as possible and just let him do whatever he wanted to do whether I thought it was wrong or not." Van Vliet used the ensuing publicity, particularly with a 1970 "Rolling Stone" interview with Langdon Winner, to promulgate a number of myths that were subsequently quoted as fact. Winner's article stated, for

title: Witching Waves
text: Witching Waves Witching Waves is an amusement ride. It was first introduced at Luna Park on Coney Island, New York, United States, in 1907. It was one of the most popular rides at Luna Park, invented by Theophilus Van Kannel, who also invented the revolving door. The ride consisted of a large oval course with a flexible metal floor. There were hidden reciprocating levers that produced a wave-like motion. The floor itself did not move but the moving wave propelled small scooter-style cars with two seats, which could be steered by the riders. In 1910, it was installed on the