Monday, April 30, 2007

Door

A door is a makeup in a wall that allows easy transformation between an opening and a closed wall. It is establish in many houses and other buildings: internal ones, doors giving access to the street/external world, and doors to private outdoor areas such as a garden or balcony. In an apartment building, an midway kind is the outer door of an apartment, inside the building.
History
The first records are those represented in the paintings of the Egyptian tombs, in which they are shown as single or double doors, each in a single piece of wood. In Egypt, where the climate is intensely dry, there would be no fear of their warping, but in other countries it would be necessary to frame them, which according to Vitruvius was done with stiles and rails: the spaces enclosed being filled with panels let into grooves made in the stiles and rails. The stiles were the vertical boards, one of which, tenoned or hinged, is known as the hanging stile, the other as the middle or meeting stile. The horizontal cross pieces are the top rail, bottom rail, and middle or intermediate rails. The most ancient doors were in timber, those made for King Solomon's temple being in olive wood, which were fixed and overlaid with gold. The doors dwelt upon in Homer would appear to have been cased in silver or brass. Besides Olive wood, elm, cedar, oak and cypress were used.

All ancient doors were hung by pivots at the top and bottom of the hanging stile which worked in sockets in the lintel and cill, the final being always in some hard stone such as basalt or granite. Those found at Nippur by Dr. Hilprecht, dating from 2000 B.C. were in dolorite. The tenons of the gates at Balawat were covered with bronze. These doors or gates were hung in two leaves, each about 8 ft.4 in. wide and 27 ft. high; they were enclosed with bronze bands or strips, 10 in. high, covered with repouss embellishment of figures, etc. The wood doors would seem to have been about 3 in. thick, but the hanging stile was over 14 inches diameter. Other sheathings of various sizes in bust have been found, which proves this to have been the universal method adopted to protect the wood pivots. In the Hauran in Syria, where timber is scarce the doors were made in stone, and one measuring 5 ft. 4 in. by 2 ft. 7 in. is in the British Museum; the band on the meeting stile shows that it was one of the leaves of a double door. At Kuffeir near Bostra in Syria, Burckhardt found stone doors, 9 to 10 ft. high, being the entrance doors of the town. In Etruria many stone doors are referred to by Dennis.

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