Combination locks have existed for centuries, but it was not until the 1800s that major advancements in this technology were made. Now, combination locks can be purchased at any hardware store or mass merchandiser. However, it should be remembered that the locks we take for granted today were developed over centuries of trial and error.
Early Evidence of Combination Locks
The earliest combination lock was found in a Roman-era tomb in Athens. Later evidence shows that in the early 1200s, a Muslim writer known as Al-Jazari included a picture of an early combination lock in his work, "The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices."
The Eureka Lock
The Eureka lock was patented in 1862. The device consisted of a combination lock with five tumblers, and was once used to lock up a vault in the U.S. Treasury Department. The lock has 1,073,741,824 combinations, and it has been calculated that it would take more than 2,000 years to try them all.
Yale Lock
The Yale lock is a famous product of the Yale Lock Company, which was founded in 1840 in New York state by Linus Yale. When Linus Yale, Jr. took on the family business, he introduced the Monitor Bank Lock. This lock is historically significant because it soon became the standard bank lock, effectively replacing locks with keys and making combination locks the preferred bank lock. The company is still in operation today.
Master Lock
Master Locks are instantly recognizable to any person who attended high school in the U.S., where they are often used in student lockers. The Master Lock Company was founded in 1921 by Wisconsin locksmith Harry Soref, and the company's first padlock was sold in 1924.
WordLock
The WordLock differs from other combination locks in that the combination to open it is not a sequence of numbers, but rather a single word. In 2004, this type of combination lock won the Staples Invention Quest competition. It was invented by Todd Basche.
Tags: combination lock, combination locks, Linus Yale, Lock Company, Master Lock
