History of Locks
Bill Stanton with part of his
collection, many of the 19th and
20th century locksmith/inventors
had reference collections.
Bill Stanton originally trained
as a telephone engineer
and was part of the team
that installed the secret
communications for the D Day
landings. His passion though
was for locks; indeed, from
his diaries we learn he was
constantly studying them and
built up quite a collection. After
the war he accepted work from
local locksmiths making keys
Safelock Ltd Articles of incorporation;
its valuable documents like
this that enable research for
our writing to be accurate.
and increasingly going on jobs
in the field. He joined Chubbs’
R&D department in the early
1950’s working alongside
John Johns-Hunt. Here he
was responsible for the lead
shielding in the Manifoil locks
to counter the KGB ‘X-Ray’
threat. He was always a fan
of Kromer and developed
their Se-Kro into the iconic
Chubb 3G110 security range.
Peter Frima, Dutch Police
Commissioner in charge
of the training academy in
Hilversum; but also had a
lifelong passion for locks.
After restoring the Aubin Trophy in the
1950’s Bill explains it to his son Richard.
Note the original base plinth. The trophy
was to later, in 2019, feature permanently
in the MLA-HoL Heritage Room
He also did much safe testing
particularly on the barrier
materials. He briefly set up his
own company where he solved
many design and technical
problems for Kromer including
a combination lock dial where
the numbers were simply
dialled but the revolutions
didn’t need to be counted.
He was head hunted by Tann
and was where he introduced
Part of Frima’s library, he was well read on security
issues and was fluent in many languages.
the Kromer locks into Tann
Safes and continued with his
intensive safe testing trials.
Both the families of Taylor
and Stanton not only passed
artefacts but they were also
large collections of archive
material accompanied
them, which enables
the documentation and
backstories to be authoritivly
written.
Just one of his many books
and booklets on police,
police training and security.
JAN/FEB 2020
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