I have my own reason for not liking door handles very much. When I was six years old and living in Germany (where door handles seemed to be the rule), I turned my head at exactly the wrong moment while running down a corridor and rammed a door handle right into my eye socket. Not fun.
Wow, you’re stating this as a factual answer? Perhaps there’s a difference in the aesthetic appreciation in America, but I see a hulking great doorknob as a damn sight uglier than a slender curved handle.
When I push a button in, or down, I expect it to turn on. When I push a light switch down, I expect it to turn wrong. That’s the natural order of things, it’s you who’s got his wrongness-detector wired back-to-front 
Up is ON. The whole thing about which way is ON goes out the window in the case of two switches on a circuit. And if there is more than one way out of a room you simply must have multiple switches.
Now that’s just silly.
Up is positive, down is negative. Up is active, down is passive. Up is wakeful, down is at rest. Up is heaven, down is hell.
It therefore follows that up is on and down is off. Silly British people.
I really must put my foot down, and lay down the law…
Stop it with the negative waves, man.
Is there a way out of this difficult conundrum?
I say that handles vs knobs is a personal decision–one of our most treasured customs. To have doorknobs is to be an American–clean living, fresh faced and wholesome. To have door handles is to be “continental”, sophisticated and glamorous–they’re just not apple pie and mom, dammit!
I live in a house with old glass knobs (very nice), newer brass knobs and <gasp> handles on our patio door and French doors. Call me a free spirit, but I like to dabble in pushing envelopes and racy behavior. Never caught a thing on either handle, but I tend to sashay out onto the veranda with grace and style…
Now for lightswitches: the on=up/down=off issue. Now you are entering into fightin’ territory! God made light switches to go up when on, dagnabit! To say otherwise is to slander the American way of life!
Look at it this way: when you are “turned on” a certain body part of yours, Gorilla Man elevates into an upward position, does it not?
(and if it doesn’t, I don’t want to know about it!)
Hence and forthwith, on=up.
I rest my case.
Left side, right side, I dont’ care. I want to know why some doors in London have the knob in the middle, including this well known entrance.
Sure - but then I want to get down to business 
[QUOTE=GorillaMan]
Wow, you’re stating this as a factual answer? Perhaps there’s a difference in the aesthetic appreciation in America, but I see a hulking great doorknob as a damn sight uglier than a slender curved handle.
[QUOTE]
Yes, i’m stating a personal opinion as a fact, because you know, this is GQ and all.
My people generally take statement of opinion not as fact. Not sure what yours do.
What doorknobs are you looking at? I rarely see “hulking great doorknobs”.
Doorknobs blend in, handles stick out. It doesn’t matter if they’re “slender and curved”.
Here’s something factual: I’ve gotten belt loops and pockets caught on door handles. Never on knobs, because knobs don’t stick out and act like a hook. Have you ever been jabbed in the hip by a door handle? I have, when trying to keep a door open with hands full of items.
Again, this is your opinion. I see it the opposite way.
I’ve snagged clothes on handles, and I’ve bruised hips by bumping into doorknobs. I guess this proves…errr…
Aha, these were/are purely decorative. Any self-respecting city gent wouldn’t ever need to open his front door himself, because there’d be a servant to do so from the inside. So no need for a functional mechanism on the exterior. And in fact 10 Downing Street can still only be opened from inside, although most doors of this type will nowadays have a discreet Yale lock, or some other secure system such as a keypad beside the door.
And you do so by turning the lights down (pun!) or off.
My work here is finished.
When I was stationed in Germany we talked longingly about returning to the “land of the round doorknobs”. We didn’t have anything against doorhandles, it’s just one of those silly things you miss while you are away from home. Missing decent plumbing on the other hand…
Think of it this way… if you take THE WHOLE DOOR off its hinge, you can now put the door whichever way you please. Lets say you are outside your house, looking at your door, and the handle is on the right. Walk inside, close the door, and turn around, and you are in for a suprise (in case you aren’t near a door, the handle will now be on the left). If it pisses you off that you have to use your right hand when you are outisde, take it off the hinges, put the hinges on the opposite side, and put the door back up.
Why is this so hard??
You’ll then get pissed off that the light switch is behind the opened door
Haha, i was trying to avoid the lightswitch derailment. Oh well… man that pisses me off!! Or, once i lived in an apartment that had a door on the top of a stairway that opened out towards the stairs. Coming up with a bag of groceries and trying to open the door without falling back and killing one’s self was quite a jig.
You are not thinking historicaly. It is only recently that a German door handle maker could sell its product to the entire EU. For much of the last 100 years, it would only sell its product in Germany. That gave it a market about as big as Texas. By contrast, even 100 years ago Sears was shipping its doorknobs to the entire US.
Well, if we’re talking historically, then in 1910 the population of Germany alone equalled two-thirds that of the US
Because door knobs were originally that: knobs. The closing and locking devises came afterward and were separate from the lock itself.
I miss those old-fashioned, faceted glass doorknobs.
If I ever have a house of my own…