Twenty years ago brothers Jon and Charles Eccleston were in the air conditioning business when a series of unexpected events propelled them into an entirely different career. One of their friends, who had become paralyzed from the neck down in an accident, asked them to build a ramp to the front door of her Berkeley home. The brothers custom-built a 70-ft. ramp, which delighted their friend until she rolled up to her front door and realized she had no way to open it. Jon took inspiration from pneumatic door closers — the type that hiss while they slowly close screen doors. He designed a remote-control door opener especially for someone with minimal mobility.
“We realized that if we pushed more air into it rather than what hissed out, it would open rather than close a door,” he says. “Our openers are for homes or apartments, and allows the door to be locked and secure. It lets people to live in their own home and helps them when entering and exiting.”
Early in the design process, Jon entered a program at San Francisco State University specifically geared toward engineering technology for disabled users. After adding the ability to operate a lock and deadbolt, his pneumatic door opening project won a student competition sponsored by the Rehabilitation Engineering Society of North America. News of this innovative device spread by word of mouth at first, and Open Sesame Door Systems was born. Still, the Ecclestons were building the compression systems in their parents’ garage, and the product was complex to install. It wasn’t just something you could put in a box and send to a customer. Just by coincidence, someone had donated an old copier to the brothers, and inside it the Ecclestons discovered a top-of-the-line clutch which could be used in their door openers.
“It was serendipity. We had a problem and found a critical part in a donated printer,” says Jon. “Then I was in the Silicon Valley around that time and happened to pick up a business card. It said, ‘Mr. Dorr, Electronics Consultant.’ That was serendipitous as well.”
It turned out that Mr. Dorr (which, coincidentally, is pronounced “door”) was a wealthy engineer. As his retirement project, he took on the challenge of improving Open Sesame door openers. The Ecclestons paid Dorr $150 a month for three years — then he told them they had paid him enough and didn’t have to send any more money. The device was perfected over the first few years, and really took off about the fifth year.
