Blog Archive: August 8, 2012
A Blast from the Past
If you’ve ever seen the movie “Back to the Future,” you know why 1955 is significant. Writers used that particular year as part of the setting to illustrate small-town American life at the time. If we were able to hop in a time machine like Michael J. Fox and land in 1955 in small-town Connecticut, we’d discover the installation of an Overhead Door Corp. garage door opener at a lakeside home. When we decided we’d had enough of the 50s and wanted to come back to present day, believe it or not, that opener would still be working!
After recently purchasing a lakeside home built in 1955 in Columbia, Conn., homeowner Michael Matthews promptly began the renovation work that comes with buying and restoring an old home. That’s when he found a still working, 1955-era Overhead Door Model E Ultronic Door Opener in his garage.
“I love old machinery so when I saw this old opener I was just fascinated,” Matthews said. “The fact that it was still working was even better.”
Made of steel and weighing close to 50 pounds, the Model E Ultronic was an AC, chain-drive opener that, at the time, was state-of-the-art for its operational capabilities. It featured both [more]