Special doorbell ‘H-bell’ has some hidden secrets.

When you are ordering food late at night alone, the loud front doorbell ring makes you nervous. Nobody is rushing you, but the annoying bell makes you run to the front door at full speed. Sometimes you are embarrassed by a scared dog run ahead of you, barking too loud. People have wondered “isn’t there a front doorbell without the mechanical sound? It would be great to customize the front doorbell” and yet lived with the inconvenience, thinking that all front doorbells are the same. We got curious about when we had had such a fixed form of doorbell. We wanted to find a special doorbell without all the inconveniences. And then we met Hyundai Engineering & Construction H-bell.

Purpose of old doorbells, quite unlike that of these days

Old doorbells had very simple form and function.

Let’s find out about the history of doorbells before we look into a special doorbell. A doorbell literally means ‘a bell that rings with the signal that calls someone’. We’ve gotten so used to the current building form that we only think of an ‘interphone’ when we hear a doorbell; but how did an old doorbell look like and when did we start to use it?

The history of Korea’s doorbell began with electricity. In May 1899, a plant established next to Dongdaemun started to provide electricity. The first use of electricity was for a commercial streetcar that went between Dongdaemun and Seodaemun. And two months later, an advertisement for selling electronic doorbells was published on .

“There is a bell in our store that we use with electricity. Purchase a device that connects to this bell, and we can have the bell installed in your office or home. It’s very cheap and it’s very convenient to call your servants with the bell. Pressing that mechanical button thing will allow you to comfortably call your servant who is 3, 400 feet away. Give it a try.” (July 29th 1899 Gaeriyanghang advertisement)

This electronic doorbell was called ‘Yobirin (‘Japanese term for a bell that calls for someone’)’ during the Japanese colonial era. Since then, a doorbell began to be used to call the owner of a house.

Evolution of doorbells

Interphone, which fixed the inconveniences of a doorbell

How did one call the owner of a house when we had no electronic doorbells? In the past, there were many houses with a ring type doorknob. People used to tap the ring type doorknob on a wall to call someone. The familiar ‘lion head front door’ is one of these ring type doorknobs.

Then the electronic doorbells were distributed, which worked for quite a while. You can find traces of it on newspapers from 1920s. An old electronic doorbell is a simple device with a small button on a half-circle body. Some old buildings still have old doorbells. At the time, people were somewhat afraid of this type of doorbell. When a bell rang at night, people got scared because they couldn’t identify who was out there.

It was the 1970s when this type of doorbell became ‘interphone’. At first, interphones were distributed in schools, factories, and offices for communication in the 1960s. Then they were applied to luxury housings. The independent housing has courtyards between the front door and the gate, which is inconvenient to open the gate for visitors. An interphone with the additional automatic door opening function was developed to take care of this issue. Then interphones were implemented to apartments.

The most advanced doorbell of our days, H-bell

H-bell reflects various opinions from the customers.

Nowadays, thanks to advanced technologies, doorbells have developed into various forms. The most renowned version would be Hyundai Engineering & Construction ‘H-bell’. H-bell is a result of analyzing and reflecting numerous customer requests such as from homes with babies, people with hearing impairment, sensitive students, etc. Its main function is signaling light instead of unnecessary sound.

You must have seen a note on a door that says, ‘please don’t ring the bell, baby is sleeping’. The loud mechanic bell sound will wake a baby up who fell asleep just now. A fetus develops hearing before any other senses, and babies can hear sound even in mother’s womb and are sensitive to sound when they are born. Also, the elderly with a hearing difficulty and people with a hearing impairment have difficulty with front doorbells that only signal with sound. They often miss the bell when they are alone at home.

H-bell lights up in three colors; blue, green and red.

H-bell sends signals with light, without sound, and makes up for those inconveniences. H-bell lights up in three colors; blue, green and red. Alarms are categorized according to different light colors and speed. The blue LED is for the front door, lobby and security office calls, etc. When it’s a lobby call, the light will blink slowly whereas the front door call will give off quick blinks. In emergencies, the red LED will be turned on.

H-bell can be easily controlled with a smartphone or wall pad.

H-bell can also be synched with your smartphone, and you can easily set many functions on a wall pad. The wall pad operates with a touchscreen, and you can set light, sound, flickering, brightness, etc., on the touchscreen. Of course, there’s also the sound mode. As there are 3 different alarm modes - ‘sound, light and sound+light’, you can choose whichever suits you. When you opt for the ‘All mode’, sound, light and smartphone alarm pop-up will all go off when someone rings. H-bell is basically installed in the living room and the master bedroom; it’s designed to be implemented onto optimum position in consideration of the living room TV and master bedroom bed position, etc.

So, we’ve taken a look at the very beginning of doorbells, how it has evolved and its latest advanced version, H-bell. Have you ever heard of the term ‘universal design’? Universal design refers to a ‘design for everyone’; a design that is made for all persons to use conveniently regardless of their age, disability, usage environment, etc. Hyundai Engineering & Construction H-bell is a stellar example of such universal design. Here’s a round of applause for the advent of products and space that are considerate of everyone, and we hope to see further advancements in the future.