The patent 4,103,526 for the Emhart cylinder was issued to Walter Surko on August 1, 1978 and was originally filed in October, 1976. IIRC they started marketing it in NYC before the patent was issued. At the time a Medeco rim cylinder was selling in the city for around $23 and Emhart went in with theirs for sale at around $14. They had a hard time selling them in NYC at that price as New Yorkers originated the phrase ’you can’t get something for nothing.'
Around 6-8 months later after the patent issued they went back to the city with a price of $28 and started having some success. Everyone in the industry except Emhart people thought the cylinder was a knock off of the Medeco cylinder and Medeco filed a Federal law suit for patent infringement. The case was not settled out of court and went to full judgement against Emhart. Emhart had to pay a royalty to Medeco for every cylinder sold until the Medeco patent expired.
Sales were not plentiful and the royalty checks were small most of the time, at least that was the common knowledge inside Medeco at the time. They did manage to sell a couple of universities some dormitory systems where the Emhart cylinder was used on exterior doors and a complimentary Corbin or Russwin cylinder inside. Students were given one key for the KA exterior doors and one key for their rooms. After just a couple of months the lockouts started. The ‘C’ on the bottom pin and the ‘T’ on the top pin actually wore completely away and a quick insertion of the key caused the pins to separate and the top pins to come out of the groove in the plug. It seems that the stump that was left by the ‘T’ would turn almost immediately and when the plug turned back……wel it wouldn’t turn far enough to get the key out.
The cylinder is still produced today but only for legacy systems.
Walter Surko is an interesting man who sincerely believed he made a new invention. I was lucky enough to meet and work with him when I worked at Yale some years later shortly after he had invented their HS cylinder.
I worked at Medeco when all of that happened and later the man who was the product manager for the Emhart cylinder also came to work at Medeco. Bob McDermot was originally a police officer with the Safe and Loft Squad in NYC and one of the most honorable men I have ever met. He was the man who answered the Medeco pick challenge in the very early 1970’s. The challenge required picking two or three Medeco cylinders chosen at random from the production line. I am told he picked the first one after around 4-5 hours. The next day he tried for a full 8 hours and resigned the task and was given a $5,000 reward for his efforts and the challenge was officially withdrawn.
I happened to overhear Bob once at a show when no one else from Medeco was around and he was asked if he was the guy who picked Medeco. Even though he was the product manager for the Emhart cylinder at the time his reply was “I opened it on one occasion.” A very honorable man.
Bob had a demonstration board with 5 KIK locks on it and would invite anyone to try to pick them, then he would pick all 5 in under 60 seconds, he was an expert lock picker. He was involved in an auto accident a number of years ago and last I heard could not sit or stand for any length of time. He also wrote a fairly famous book called Stop Thief relating some stories from his police days.
BBE.
