Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks

by A. C. Hobbs; George Dodd

The members of your committee, consisting mostly of fellow-tradesmen of Mr. Newell, experience great satisfaction in the fact that it has fallen to their lot to vote to their colleague on the other side of the ocean an acknowledgment of his successful ingenuity, and they close the Report with the request that the Institute will transmit to Mr. Newell of New York, in North America, the Diploma and Gold Medal, together with a copy of this Report, according to the motion of the Aulic Councillor and Professor Reuter.

[An exact copy of the original Report as preserved in the archives of the National Mechanics’ Institute of Lower Austria.]

DR. SCHWARTZ,
Assistant Secretary of the Institute.

There are other circumstances connected with the American bank-lock, in relation to events both in the United States and in England, to which attention will be directed in a subsequent chapter.

The English patent for Messrs. Day and Newell’s lock, dated April 15, 1851, runs as follows: “The object of the present improvements is the constructing of locks in such manner that the interior arrangements, or the combination of the internal movable parts, may be changed at pleasure according to the form given to, or change made in, the key, without the necessity of arranging the movable parts of the lock by hand, or removing the lock or any part thereof from the door. In locks constructed on this plan the key may be altered at pleasure; and the act of locking, or throwing out the bolt of the lock, produces the particular arrangement of the internal parts which corresponds to that of the key for the time being. While the same is locked, this form is retained until the lock is unlocked or the bolt withdrawn, upon which the internal movable parts return to their original position with reference to each other; but these parts cannot be made to assume or be brought back to their original position, except by a key of the precise form and dimensions as the key by which they were made to assume such arrangement in the act of locking. The key is changeable at pleasure, and the lock receives a special form in the act of locking according to the key employed, and retains that form until in the act of unlocking by the same key it resumes its original or unlocked state. The lock is again changeable at pleasure, simply by altering the arrangement of the movable bits of the key; and the key may be changed to any one of the forms within the number of permutations of which the parts are susceptible.”

The “claims” put forth under this patent are the following:—

“1. The constructing, by means of a first and secondary series of slides or tumblers, of a changeable lock, in which the particular form or arrangement of parts of the lock, imparted by the key to the first and secondary series of slides or tumblers, is retained by a cramp-plate.

“2. The constructing, by means of a first and secondary series of slides or tumblers, of a changeable lock, in which the peculiar form or arrangement of parts of the lock, imparted by the key, is retained by means of a tooth or teeth, and notches on the secondary series of slides or tumblers.

“3. The application to locks of a third or intermediate series of slides or tumblers.

“4. The application of a dog with a pin over-lapping the slide or tumblers, for the purpose of holding-in the bolt when the lock is locked or unlocked.