History of Locks
An Inspired Vision from a Yorkshire Man – Joseph Bramah
The Bramah lock could be considered the first real security lock . Invented in 1784 , 230 years later - the design principle remains largely unchanged .
» JOSEPH BRAMAH WAS A VERY talented and productive inventor with 18 patents to his name , including diverse items such as a hydraulic press to a water closet , he was way ahead of his time .
The Bramah lock story is fascinating and full of intrigue , twists and turns .
It ’ s true , that Robert Barron ’ s invention a few years earlier was the first to patent a lock with the ‘ double acting ’ principle , and of course this was ground breaking at the time and shouldn ’ t be underestimated . For the first time , wards and the fundamental weaknesses of the skeleton key was finally no longer the guardian of security . Instead , the principles of locking were beginning to be understood and explored . Although Barron had significantly raised the bar in the sense that double acting , moving tumblers gave enhanced security , the number of permutations or differs were soon found to be disappointingly low , and wards continued to be used as well as tumblers .
A little later his lock was developed further , as provided for in the original patent , and the conventional ‘ H ’ pocket levers were widely adopted and later became generically known as Chubb levers , particularly in mainland Europe .
However this story is about Joseph Bramah and his visionary lock invention . Born in Barnsley , South Yorkshire on the 2nd April 1749 to his tenant farmers Joseph Bramah Senior and wife Mary , lived in a rural setting .
Whether , at age 16 an injury rendered him unable to peruse a farming career or perhaps the appeal of emerging technologies had a greater appeal , is not clear , but what is known is that he was apprenticed to a local carpenter , Thomas Allott .
Once he completed his apprenticeship he moved to London , a journey undertaken on foot , to seek his fortune , where he secured employment as a cabinet maker . After a short time , he set up in business on his own at an address near Golden Square . The scene was now set .
Working in the city , gave Bramah a completely different perspective on life and his fertile mind soon started to address the social conditions in the city , where there was a much higher density of people .
After improving the water closet , his mind turned to another social anomaly which seems to be more prevalent in denser populations - ‘ house robberies ’. Inspired by a recent patent ( that of Robert Barron and his ‘ double acting principle ), Bramah took a monumental step in terms of enhancing security and developed the double acting principle in a completely new way , substituting tumblers by sliders , and at the same time miniaturising the mechanism and key to become the lock that everybody knows today .
The lock was so radical and required such precision that ground-breaking machine tools had to be invented for the first time in order to make the locks commercially viable . The tools were designed by Bramah and brought to fruition by Henry Maudsley , a young but skilled engineer . Some of those early machines are now in the Science Museum , and one , with the addition of an electric motor , is still in use by Bramah today when asked to cut the earlier style keys .
Final Version
First Model
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JUL / AUG 2022
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