What is the device on these doors?

Factual Questions
1

One summer we spent a week at a beach house on Sullivan’s Island, SC. In the photo, you see a device attached to a door.

http://hlanelee.angelfire.com/thing.jpg

There were several of them attached to doors throughout the house. It’s a hollow steel ball attached to an arm, which was attached to the door. It could move back and forth like a pendulum, but it rubs against the door and doesn’t move freely. You can see the rub marks on the door. So it didn’t swing by simply opening or closing the door. This photo was taken in 2003 and I still don’t know what it is or what purpose it served. If you know what it is, please let me know.

2

I just get a blank page when I click on your link.

3

Looks like agelfire doesn’t like hotlinking but what you describe sounds like a door knocker.

4

Angelfire doesn’t allow hotlinking. Even from www.angelfire.com as I tried.

Can you post it somewhere else?

5

You can copy and paste the link directly into your browser address bar and get the image.

I have no idea what it is.

6

Door stop, maybe?

7

[moderating]
I’ve changed the title of this thread from “What is this?” to “What is the device on these doors?”

As a charter member, hlanelee, you should be aware by now that we require descriptive thread titles.
[/moderating]

8

Very hard to get a sense of perspective from that picture. Is this a pocket door? If so, it could be the door pull. Does it ring if moved? Maybe it’s an alerting rig to let people know that somebody has opened the door?

9

Sorry, but I have been away for quite a while and didn’t think. Please don’t shun me.

10

They were on regular room doors. They did not ring. They just swung back and forth on the plane surface of the door.

11

Were the others near the edge of the doors like the one in the photo?

If so, I’m with Darryl Lict. Maybe you turn it 90 degrees to prevent a door from swinging shut.
Further WAG: Something to do with hurricanes?

12

Good grief, I haven’t seen one of those since I was a kid. Looks like the device we had on the screen door. If the door was closing too fast, it would swing out and cushion the door from the slam. The door would bounce back slightly, close more slowly and the ball would not swing out.

13

No problem! Welcome back.