SAFES AND LOCKS.
Prior to the century safes were not constructed to withstand the test of
intense heat. Efforts were numerous, however, to render them safe
against the entrance of thieves, but the ingenuity of the thieves
advanced more rapidly than the ingenuity of safe-makers. And the race
between these two classes of inventors still continues. For with the
exercise of a vast amount of ingenuity in intricate locks, aided by all
the advancement of science as to the nature of metals, their tough
manufacture and their resistance to explosives, thieves still manage to
break in and steal. The only sure protection against burglars at the
close of the nineteenth century appears to consist of what it was at the
close of any previous century--the preponderance of physical force and
the best weapons. Among the latest inventions are electrical connections
with the safe, whereby tampering therewith alarms one or more watchmen
at a near station.
A classification of safes embraces, _Fire-proof_, _Burglar-proof_, _Safe
Bolt Works_, _Express and Deposit Safes and Boxes_, _Circular Doors_,
_Pressure Mechanism_, and _Water and Air Protective Devices_.
The attention of the earliest inventors of the century were directed
toward making safes fire-proof. In England the first patent granted for
a fire-proof safe was to Richard Scott in 1801. It had two casings, an
inner and outer one, including the door, and the interspace was filled
in with charcoal, or wood, and treated with a solution of alkaline salt.
This idea of interspacing filled in with non-combustible material has
been generally followed ever since. The particular inventions in that
line consist in the discovery and appliance of new lining materials,
variations in the form of the interspacing, and new methods in the
construction of the casings, and the selection of the best metals for
such construction.
In 1834 William Marr of England patented a lining for a double metallic
chest, filled with non-combustible materials such as mica, or talc clay,
lime, and graphite. Asbestos commenced to be used about the same time.
The great fire in New York City in 1835, destroying hundreds of millions
of dollars’ worth of property of every description, gave a great impetus
to the invention of fire-proof safes in America.
B. G. Wilder there patented in 1843 his celebrated safe, now extensively
used throughout the world. It consisted of a double box of wrought-iron
plates strengthened at the edges with bar iron, with a bar across the
middle; and as a filling for the interspaces he used hydrated gypsum,
hydraulic cement, plaster of paris, steatite, alum, and the dried
residuum of soda water.
Herring was another American who invented celebrated safes, made with a
boiler-iron exterior, a hardened steel inner safe, with the interior
filled with a casting of franklinite around rods of soft steel. Thus the
earth, air and water were ransacked for lining materials, in some cases
more for the purpose of obtaining a patent than to accomplish any real
advance in the art. Water itself was introduced as a lining, made to
flow through the safes, sometimes from the city mains, and so retained
that when the temperature in case of fire reached 212° F. it became
steam; and an arrangement for introducing steam in place of water was
contrived. Among other lining materials found suitable were soapstone,
alumina, ammonia, copperas, starch, Epsom salts, and gypsum, paper,
pulp, and alum, and a mixture of various other materials.
After safes were produced that would come out of fiery furnaces where
they had been buried for days without even the smell of fire or smoke
upon their contents, inventors commenced to direct their attention to
burglar-proof safes.
Chubb, in 1835, patented a process of rendering wooden safes burglar
proof by lining them with steel, or case-hardened iron plate. Newton in
1853 produced one made of an outer shell of cast iron, an interior
network of wrought iron rods, and fluid iron poured between these, so
that a compound mass was formed of different degrees of resistance to
turn aside the burglar’s tools. Chubb again, in 1857, and in subsequent
years, and Chartwood, Glocker, and Thompson and Tann and others in
England invented new forms to prevent the insertion of wedges and the
drilling by tools. Hall and Marvin of the United States also invented
safes for the same purpose. Hall had thick steel plates dovetailed
together; and angle irons tenoned at the corners. Marvin’s safe was
globeshaped, to present no salient points for the action of tools, made
of chrome steel, mounted in this shape on a platform, or enclosed in a
fire-proof safe. Herring also invented a safe in which he hinged and
grooved the doors with double casings, and which he hung with a
lever-hinge, provided the doors with separate locks and packed all the
joints with rubber to prevent the operation of the air pump--which had
become a dangerous device of burglars with which to introduce explosives
to blow open the doors.
Still later and more elaborate means have been used to frustrate the
burglars. Electricity has been converted into an automatic warder to
guard the castle and the safe and to give an alarm to convenient
stations when the locks or doors are meddled with and the proper
manipulation not used. Express safes for railroad cars have been made of
parts telescoped or crowded together by hydraulic power, requiring heavy
machinery for locking and unlocking, and this machinery is located in
machine shops along the route and not accessible to burglars.
About 1815 inventors commenced to produce devices to show with certainty
if a lock had been tampered with. The keyhole was closed by a revolving
metallic curtain, and paper was secured over the keyhole. As a further
means of detection photographs of some irregular object are made, one of
which is placed over the keyhole and the other is retained. This
prevents the substitution of one piece of paper for another piece
without detection. A large number of patents have been taken out on
glass coverings for locks which have to be broken before the lock can be
turned. These are called seal locks.
Locks of various kinds, consisting at least of the two general features
of a bolt and a key to move the bolt, have existed from very ancient
days. The Egyptians, the Hebrews and the Chinese, and Oriental nations
generally had locks and keys of ponderous size. Isaiah speaks of the key
of the house of David; and Homer writes sonorously of the lock in the
house of Penelope with its brazen key, the respondent wards, the flying
bars and valves which,
“Loud as a bull makes hills and valley ring,
So roared the lock when it released the spring.”
The castles, churches and convents of the middle ages had their often
highly ornamental locks and their warders to guard and open them. Later,
locks were invented with complex wards. These are carved pieces of metal
in the lock which fit into clefts or grooves in the key and prevent the
lock from being opened except by its own proper key.
As early as 1650 the Dutch had invented the Letter lock, the progenitor
of the modern permutation lock, consisting of a lock the bolt of which
is surrounded by several rings on which were cut the letters of the
alphabet, which by a prearrangement on the part of the owner were made
to spell a certain word or number of words before the lock could be
opened. Carew, in verses written in 1621, refers to one of these locks
as follows:--
“As doth a lock that goes with letters; for, till every one be known,
The lock’s as fast as though you had found none.”
The art had also advanced in the eighteenth century to the use of
_tumblers_ in locks, the lever or latch or plate which falls into a
notch of the bolt and prevents it from being shot until it has been
raised or released by the action of the key. Barron in England in 1778
obtained a patent for such a lock.
Joseph Bramah, who has before been referred to in connection with the
hydraulic press he invented, also in 1784 invented and patented in
England a lock which obtained a world-wide reputation and a century’s
extensive use. It was the first, or among the first of locks which
troubled modern burglars’ picks. Its leading features were a key with
longitudinal slots, a barrel enclosing a spring, plates, called sliders,
notched unequally and resting against the spring, a plate with a central
perforation and slits leading therefrom to engage the notches of the
slides simultaneously and allow the frame to be turned by the key so as
to actuate the bolt. Chubb and Hobbs of England made important
improvements in tumbler locks, which for a long time were regarded as
unpickable.
Most important advances have been made during the century in
_Combination_ or _Permutation Locks_ and _Time Locks_. For a long time
permutation or combination locks consisted of modifications of one
general principle, and that was the Dutch letter lock already referred
to, or the wheel lock, composed of a series of disks with letters around
their edges. The interior arrangement is such as to prevent the bolt
being shot until a series of letters were in line, forming a combination
known only to the operator. Time locks are constructed on the principle
of clockwork, so that they cannot be opened even with the proper key
until a regulated interval of time has elapsed.
Among the most celebrated combination and time locks of the century are
those known as the Yale locks, chiefly the inventions of Louis Yale,
Jr., of Philadelphia. The Yale double dial lock is a double combination
bank or safe lock having two dials, each operating its own set of
tumblers and bolts, so that two persons, each in possession of his own
combination, must be present at a certain time in order to unlock it. If
this double security is not desired, one person alone may be possessed
of both combinations, or the combinations may be set as one. In their
time locks a safe can be set so as to not only render it impossible to
unlock except at a predetermined time each day, but the arrangement is
such that on intervening Sundays the time mechanism will entirely
prevent the operation of the lock or the opening of the door on that
day.
Another feature of the lock is the thin, flat keys with bevel-edged
notchings, or with longitudinal sinuous corrugations to fit a narrow
slit of a cylinder lock. To make locks for use with the corrugated keys
machines of as great ingenuity as the locks were devised. In such a lock
the keyhole, which is a little very narrow slit, is formed sinuously to
correspond to the sinuosities of the key. No other key will fit it, nor
can it be picked by a tool, as the tool must be an exact duplicate of
the key in order to enter and move in the keyhole.
Of late years numerous locks have been invented for the special uses to
which they are to be applied. Thus, one type of lock is that for safety
deposit vaults and boxes, in which a primary key in the keeping of a
janitor operates alone the tumblers or guard mechanism to set the lock,
while the box owner may use a secondary key to completely unlock the box
or vault.
Master, or secondary key locks, are now in common use in hotels and
apartment-houses, by which the key of the door held by a guest will
unlock only his door, but the master key held by the manager or janitor
will unlock all the doors. This saves the duplication and multiplicity
of a vast number of extra keys.
The value of a simple, cheap, safe, effective lock in a place where its
advantages are appreciated by all classes of people everywhere is
illustrated in the application of the modern rotary registering lock to
the single article of mail bags. Formerly it was not unusual that losses
by theft of mail matter were due in part to the extraction of a portion
of the mail matter by unlocking or removing the lock and then restoring
it in place.
The United States, with its 76,000,000 of people, found it necessary to
use in its mail service hundreds of thousands of mail pouches, having
locks for securing packages of valuable matter. But these locks are of
such character that it is impossible for anyone to break into the bag
and conceal the evidence of his crime. The unfortunate thief is reduced
to the necessity of stealing the whole pouch. Losses under this system
have grown so small “as to be almost incapable of mathematical
calculation.”
Safe and convenient locks for so very many purposes are now so common,
even to prevent the unauthorised use of an umbrella, or the unfriendly
taking away of a bicycle or other vehicle, that notwithstanding the
nineteenth century dynamite with which burglars still continue to blow
open the best constructed safes and vaults, still a universal sense of
greater security in such matters is beginning to manifest itself; and
not only the loss of valuables by fire and theft is becoming the
exception, but the temptation to steal is being gradually removed.