I was fairly disappointed with the web site the first time I came across it. Apparently the museum itself is better than the web site?
Since I first became interested in locks several months ago, I’ve been struck by the amount of lock history that seems to be ‘lost’. Eagle Lock Company is a good example. I currently have over 30 different Eagle locks. When I noticed I had so many, I wanted to know more about the company. It was a large company, producing thousands of locks over many years, with hundreds if not thousands of employees. I have no doubt that many people worked at Eagle for their entire lives, and clearly it was a large part of the local economy. And yet, finding any real information on Eagle is like pulling teeth. The company had a history but you’d never know it from the available information on the Internet. The best I’ve found are a few patents and some court filings from lawsuits the company was involved with.
Here’s another example: When I went to look for an “Antique Lock Identification and Pricing Guide”, I found exactly 2: The Padlock Collector by Franklin Arnall and Collectible Locks by Richard Holiner. Both are out of print and have to be located with used book sellers. Both are of limited usefulness, each lock represented with a single poor black and white image with no description… I’m not really wanting to denigrate the efforts of these two authors - their work is certainly better than nothing at all.
I think maybe I expected too much - but there are a great many lock experts out there - not necessarily locksmiths per se but people who have a piece of the puzzle. History not recorded is history lost. Worse, knowledge and skills not passed down are skills lost.
There seems to be a belief, one of those “everybody knows” kind of thing - that only full-time professional locksmiths would be interested in locks. But nothing could be further from the truth. I’m not a locksmith, and while I may seek to learn some of the things that a locksmith would know, I’m getting too old to change my profession.
But here’s the thing. Of late, I’ve taken to always carrying 3-4 old locks with me - usually brass but not always - usually small but not always. And I have to tell you that they are the world’s best conversation starters. People love them! They love to hold them. They’ll ask sincere questions about them. They want to know more.
So when I first went to the museum’s web site I expected a significant display of locks and their history. What I found just didn’t meet what I’d hoped to find. Maybe it is a funding thing?
