Turnstile

A turnstile (also called a gateline, baffle gate, automated gate, turn gate in some regions) is a form of gate which allows one person to pass at a time. A turnstile can be configured to enforce one-way human traffic. In addition, a turnstile can restrict passage only to people who insert a coin, ticket, transit pass, security credential, or other method of payment or verification. Modern turnstiles can incorporate biometrics, including retina scanning, fingerprints, and other individual human characteristics which can be scanned.

A turnstile can be used in the case of paid access (sometimes called a faregate or ticket barrier when used for this purpose), for example to access public transport, a pay toilet, or to restrict access to authorized people, for example in the lobby of an office building.

History

Turnstiles were originally used, like other forms of stile, to allow human beings to pass while excluding livestock, grave yards being one application. They may have been used from the early modern period to control access to toll roads, and retail streets, the Holborn Great Turnstile appearing in 16th-century literature Turnstiles were adopted as a means to control access to building and amusements during the 19th century, with many sports stadiums and swimming pools installing them, patents for improvements to the concept being granted to manufacturers. Coin and later ticket operated turnstiles appeared on mass transit systems during the 20th century, magnetic strip encoded tickets and passes replacing earlier perforated tickets, during the late 1960s, in Tokyo. The use of turnstiles, in 20th-century United States, has been credited to Clarence Saunders, who used them in his first Piggly Wiggly store.

Applications

Turnstiles are used at a wide variety of settings, including stadiums, amusement parks, mass transit stations, office lobbies, airports, ski resorts, factories, power plants, casinos, construction sites, and zoos.