2. Opening And Closing Things
Opening things is the function most associated with the screwdriver. It's commonly thought that the classic Doctors opened everything, but this function is used mostly in the new series as the new Doctors show an overindulgence of opening things. On the surface it sounds simple enough use a tool to open something. But as I've spoken about this previously, opening things can be accomplished in several different ways. The first use of opening something electrically was by the Third Doctor in Inferno where it controlled the electrical motors of the garage door where he had the TARDIS console stored. Out of the twenty uses of the sonic screwdriver in the story Inferno, 19 of them were for opening and closing the garage door. For this he used sound converted to electricity to control the motors. An electromechanical amplifying sound transducer capable of converting sound into amplified electrical waves is currently used in by the Orange Telecommunication company in a t-shirt outfitted with piezoelectric film that acts like a large microphone to tap the sound pressure waves and convert them into electricity which is stored in an internal battery. This battery transmits power to your mobile phone.