The World's Leader in Turnstiles

Turnstile History

Block Island, RI

The origins of the TURNSTILE date back to first millennium England.

The first turnstile maker was probably a farmer. Our farmer would have had cattle and crops and he would have fenced off the border between his crops and live stock with a rock wall.

In order to make going from his crops area to his livestock area easier, while keeping his cattle away from his crops, he would have built a stone STILE in his wall. The stone STILE probably consisted of two steps up, a short platform and two steps down.

At some point, our farmer would have grown tired of trudging up and down the steps of his STILE. One day, our enterprising farmer decided to plunge a post into the ground and mount a cross of wood on top of the post. He would have used a spike to keep the cross on the post and the cross would have rotated about the spike like the propeller of an airplane. Hence the TURNSTILE.

Today if you ask someone what a turnstile is, they will think of a housing with a revolving head mounted to it like a three-legged milk-stool on its side. This is, in fact, the very concept developed by John Perey and Conrad Trubenback in approximately 1928.

Today, turnstiles are as much mechanical devices as electronic. The turnstile has evolved from a simple counting device to a device that can, for example, count, scan a ticket, communicate via radio with a database management system to validate a ticket and be unlocked, all within milliseconds and all powered by battery.

While Perey Turnstiles, Inc., manufactures Optical Stiles (with no arms at all), Drop Arm Stiles (one long arm), Roto-Gates (7' tall turnstiles) and gates, there is still only one absolutely reliable way to insure ONE entry per ticket or I.D. card and ONE count per person - That is the venerable turnstile.

We owe a debt to Mr. John Perey and Mr. Conrad Trubenbach who began the modern age of the turnstile and, if you think about it, may have touched more people with their invention than any other people on earth.