Hydraulic invention: No need to clamber for theater seating

Next time someone disrupts your evening by clambering in or out of a nearby theatre seat, remember: it needn’t be this way.

In 1924, Louis J Duprey of Dorchester, Massachusetts, patented a system that “permits any patron of the theatre to enter or leave his place without at all disturbing other patrons”. You, the patron, entered vertically, though a trap door, already ensconced on a chair. When you wanted to leave, a discreet twist of a knob activated the machinery in reverse, causing the chair, and you, to quietly sink back down, and out.…

—So begins this month’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian.