Sargent & Greenleaf circa 1950 Waltham Mass, USA

Hypner

I would love to know more about this amazing lock I got from my grandfather. I cannot even imagine what part of a bank vault this could be. I mean, the key that opens the glass panel is so simple it is almost laughable. It weighs close to 20 pounds and was bolted to something with five large bolts on the back side:

You can see one is still retained inside. (Sorry about the blur)
The side has an odd access:

I love the internet so much. Whenever I need to know something there
is a die-hard forum of folks who live and breath it.

Thanks in advance,
Hypner

mercury

Your lock is what is called a time lock. They were invented to address a specific method of safe & vault robbery.

When safe & vault engineering advanced to the point that the use of nitroglycerin and other explosives became ineffective, the robbers took to kidnapping the bank manager after hours & forcing them to open the safe/vault.

The purpose of a time lock is to prevent the safe being opened, even with the correct combination, until a preset time has elapsed. This means even the legitimate owners of the safe cannot open it outside of the preset time, so kidnapping the bank manager was pointless as he would be unable to open the safe/vault.

There are three clock movements in the time lock you have for reliability purposes & it only takes one of the clockwork movements to be working for the time lock to function.

Here is a link to much more information about time locks : http://www.my-time-machines.net/my_time_lock_collection.htm

Jope that helps,

…mercury

Doug MacQueen

Mercury, you got it right about the reasons for the time lock, which became accepted by the banking industry in the 4th quarter of the 19th century. It had nothing to do with the use of nitro though, which by the end of the 19 century, had become a major threat. Obviously more so with safes than with vaults due to size, but both reached a point in the 1st quarter of the 20th century where nitro was no longer considered feasible. However, this was only true of the best of the safes and the better vault doors. The threat has never entirely gone away but it is a rare occurrence, at least here in the US. Doug

mercury

I stand corrected & appreciate it.

I have read the explanation I gave elsewhere, complete with the nitro references & it is only by people such as yourself that this misinformation will cease to be repeated by more & more people, as I just did. I am usually very wary of quoting information from unknown sources, but had read this so many times in many places(including this site, I think) that I assumed it was correct.

It is through forums such as this one that such myths can be overturned. I wonder how many such myths will continue to be perpetuated because those with the real facts have now passed away & their knowledge died with them?

Thankyou,

…mercury

Doug MacQueen

It’s odd I had never heard that one. Part of the problem, I suspect, comes from when generalizations are taken for absolutes. As an example, I was generalizing in my statement, when I said the industry had come to grips with the nitro threat in the 1st quarter of the 20th century. What remains a little known fact was that the Corliss cannonball safe, first introduced in 1876, withstood massive amounts of both nitro and dynamite in US Treasury testing in 1892. It’s design of a cast iron body with internal rebar, is an idea I suspect Corliss got from Linus Yale Jr. In the 1850’s, Yale not only patented the idea but was making chests of this design. And that brings us to another myth, common here in the US, that Yale never made safes. Doug

wylk

Hypner wrote
…the key that opens the glass panel is so simple it is almost laughable.

The glass door is mostly to keep dust out of the timers and prevent any damage from accidentally bumping into it; some simply had a latch with no key. Since it’s mounted on the inside of the door there isn’t much point in overprotecting it. An excellent book on time locks is “American Genius” by Erroll (and Erroll); great photography and history but it may be pricey.

Here are a couple of pictures to show timelocks on vault doors. The first one got photoshopped a bit but is fairly good; the second one is a door at Disneyland (they had an operating bank for many years, now the space is a gallery). Where do you live? There may be a vault door you can inspect; many old banks get converted to restaurants or other businesses.

[unknown]

Doug MacQueen

Thanks Jim for jumping in and adding the info regarding the OP’s question as I am so easily sidetracked. The price on “American Genius” has come down considerably, and in my mind it was a deal at it’s original price. Doug