In the manufacture of locks and keys generally, there is no reason why the factory system should not, to a certain extent, be applicable. By this will be understood, the production of similar parts by tools or machines, graduated in respect to each other with more care than can be done by the hand method. If we suppose that a lock of particular construction comprises twenty screws and small pieces of metal, and that there are required, for general disposal in the market, five sizes of such a lock; there would thus be a hundred pieces of metal required for the series, each one differing, either in shape or size, from every one of the others. Now, on the factory or manufacturing system, as compared with the handicraft system, forging, drawing, casting, stamping, and punching, would supersede much of the filing; the drilling machine would supersede the drill-stock and bow, and other machines would supersede other hand-worked tools. This would be done—not merely because the work could be accomplished more quickly or more cheaply—but because an accuracy of adjustment would be attained, such as no hand-work could equal, unless it be such special work as would command a high rate of payment. For any one size in the series, and any one piece of metal in each size of lock, a standard would be obtained which could be copied to any extent, and all the copies would be like each other. To pursue our illustration, the manufacturer might have a hundred boxes or drawers, and might supply each with a hundred copies of the particular piece of metal to which it is appropriated, all so exactly alike that any one copy might be taken as well as any other. Ten pieces, one from each of ten of these boxes, would together form a lock; ten, one from each of another ten boxes, would form a second lock, and so on; and there would be, in the whole of the boxes, materials for a thousand locks of one construction, a hundred of each size.
Now the advantage of the machine or factory mode of producing such articles is this, that they can be made in large numbers at one time, whenever the steam-engine is at work; and that when so made, the pieces are shaped so exactly alike, the screws have threads so identical, and the holes are bored so equal in diameter, that any one of a hundred copies would act precisely like all the others, thereby giving great advantages to the men employed in putting the lock together.
These principles are being applied by Messrs. Hobbs and Co. in their London establishment. A number of machines, worked by steam-power, are employed in shaping the several pieces of metal contained in a lock; and all the several pieces are deposited in labelled compartments, one to each kind of piece. The machines are employed—in some cases to do coarse work, which they can accomplish more quickly than it can be done by men; and in other cases to do delicate work, which they can accomplish more accurately than men; but so far is this from converting the men into lowly-paid automatons (as some might suppose), that the manufacturers are better able to pay good wages for the handicraft labour necessary in putting the locks together, than for forming the separate parts by hand; just as the “watchmaker,” as he is called, who puts the separate parts of the watch together, is a better-paid mechanic than the man who is engaged in fabricating any particular parts of the watch.
It may be observed that the system of manufacturing on a large scale, by many men engaged in one large building, is more nearly universal in the United States than in England. The workshop system, as pursued at Willenhall by the lock-makers, is very little practised in America. Being comparatively a new community, and being at liberty to select for imitation or for improvement whichever of the usages or systems in the old country they may prefer, the Americans have preferred to adopt the factory system rather than the workshop system, and to carry out the former to an extent not yet equalled in England—not yet equalled, we mean, in the number of trades to which it is applied.
CHAPTER XII.
ENGLISH PATENTS FOR LOCKS—AUBIN’S LOCK TROPHY.
We propose to conclude this small work with a few details respecting the various patented inventions in locks, and concerning Mr. Aubin’s remarkable lock trophy. These two subjects relate to locks in general, rather than to any specified constructions in particular, and can on that account more conveniently be given here than in connexion with any of the foregoing chapters.
Mr. Chubb, in the appendix to his paper on locks and keys read before the Institution of Civil Engineers, gave a useful list of all the patents taken out in England in relation to this subject, down to the year 1849. We here transcribe this list:
List of Patents for Locks and Latches granted since the Establishment of the Patent Laws.
“As no complete list of the patents granted for locks from the time of James I. has hitherto been published, it is believed that the following list, which has been very carefully drawn up, and which comprises all patents from the year 1774, when the first patent for a lock was granted, to the present time, will be found useful as a reference for all who are interested in the subject.