The History of the Doorknob

We do not know who invented the doorknob.  Our distant Neanderthal ancestors had no need for doorknobs because they had no doors. They lived up in trees or in caves.  Some of them may have had time-share condos, but were ashamed to admit they had been rooked.   

The first doors we have record of were already being knocked on by salesmen during the Dorian ascendancy in the Mediterranean around 3000 B.C.  We can only assume that these wooden doors had doorknobs attached to their doors, although Von Schleerpuss, in his epic study of Dorian culture, “Das  Siebentausendzweihundertvierundfünfzig”,  postulates that the early Dorians may have simply shut and bolted their doors at night and then in the morning smashed them to pieces in order to get out again.  This required a new door to be built every day for the average household, thus explaining the lack of forests on the Ionian peninsula by the time of Socrates.  But then, Von Schleerpuss was known for making things up, especially when it came to his income tax.  To this day students of ancient history are divided between the Knobians and the Anti-Knobians.  If you care to know more about this fascinating controversy we recommend you take a cold shower.

By the time of Chaucer the doorknob was a revered institution, at least in England.  Made of brass, it was often the most expensive item in the entire household, and was taken out of the door at night and put under a mattress for safekeeping, and then reinstalled in the morning.  In Elizabethan England great fortunes were made by bold mariners, who sailed the seven seas in search of golden doorknobs to bring home to their sovereign.  The great Malay Door Latch from the temple in Rangalang is on display at the Thames Museum in London.  It is studded with jagged, uncut diamonds.  The Rangalangians were glad to get rid of it, since every time they turned the knob it sliced their hands to ribbons.

American ingenuity brought the world the glass doorknob in the early 1850’s; the French introduced elegant ivory doorknobs in the 1870’s; the first plastic doorknob was installed at the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago, Illinois, in 1899; and in 1920 all the rusty, decrepit doorknobs in the White House were replaced by shiny new stainless steel doorknobs made from ore mined at the Mesabi Iron Range in northern Minnesota.  (We wanted to add a joke here about how Congress is still full of rusty old doorknobs, but the editor wouldn’t let us.)

Today the digital doorknob is rapidly replacing traditional doorknobs everywhere except in Japan, where bamboo doorknobs are so ingrained in the culture that they are passed down from generation to generation as family heirlooms.

If you would like to know more about the history of doorknobs we suggest you see a psychiatrist.  You need one.