time lock questions

girluknow

Does anyone know, regarding the mechanism invented by Newbury to protect time locks, if the mechanism did indeed actually work if a vault door was struck in an attempt to damage the time lock or make it run down prematurely? I was reading the patent info on Google books and wondered if either of the mechanisms were commonly installed with time locks - either the one Newbury invented, or the other one that worked to prevent retraction of the bolts if the outside lock was pried off?
Does anyone happen to know if either of these mechanisms were in common use in banks in 1888? Or if you can direct me to a place where I can do further research? Thanks very much.

I’m also trying to research and understand the basic mechanics of bank burglary in that same time period. I understand that nitroglycerine wasn’t being used yet, but dynamite was, in stick form? Or was gunpowder still the predominant way to blow a vault door open? I think where I’m confused is that I’ve read that safe plates were impregnable or almost so to drilling and that the seal along the side of the door was so good, it was impossible to insert powder there, too. Were the vaults really that safe in the late 1880’s or was that mostly manufacturers’ advertisements claiming they were?

If the vault door did not have the time lock’s secondary safety mechanism and the bank robber slammed the door with a sledge hammer, did he stand a good chance of disabling the time lock so he could open the door with the combination? If you had an older door on your bank vault–say it was installed before Newbury’s invention–could the safety mechanism be added on later, easily? It was just an issue of springs, wasn’t it?

Thanks for any help anyone can give.

Mara

Dean Nickel

As for the seal. Yes the seam from the door to the safe was good enough to not allow much depth of powder to get in enough to do any damage.

As for the explosive you would have had gun powder there but it wouldn’t have helped as it has to be contained to do any major damage. It burns too slow for it to work well in just a pile of powder. Try it some time and place a fuse in a pile that you set somewhere and it just goes flash and burns quick. Now if you were able to make a hole in the safe between the door and the body of the safe and then cap it somehow it might do some light damage. I do not think that one could open a safe from that time well with this method. As for the sticks … yes you could but you would run the same risk to the paper contents as a torch would run in that it would burn it. It was the change from coin to bills that really changed how the safe was opened, or at least that is what I believe. I have notes that was taken off a safe cracker in 1923 by my grandfather (police officer) and it was fun to read now that I was in the locksmith craft. He was caught by chance in the act of opening a safe.

Dean Nickel

http://www.my-time-machines.net/my_time_lock_collection.htm
This would be the person that I would ask your quesiton on time locks.

Paul Prescott

Was it Newbury that invented the system ? , I thought it was the guy at Yales that came up with the spring mounted platform to protect the lock from kinetic / impact / seismic damage or interference. The name escapes me at present, I’ll look it up later.

I doubt it could have been retrofitted, it would have been easier to fit a new timelock which would have been quite straightforward.

S&G used a similar system except they used Rubber mounting discs between their locks and the safe / vault door to protect it.

girluknow

Thank you very much for your replies, Halflock and Oldlock. As far as Newbury inventing the system, I am only just now learning about this stuff so I can’t say. I’m going by the information contained here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=duwGAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA455&dq=bank+vault+gunpowder&lr=&output=text

He apparently had a patent for improvement to time locks, but I don’t know more than what’s contained there.

I did come across David Erroll’s new site and emailed him and he graciously replied. I’m basically trying to learn about the common methods used to break into bank vaults in the late 1880’s. I’m working on a story and I like to be correct in the historical details. I didn’t know time locks could be damaged from outside the vault, but Mr. Erroll reminded me that vault doors were becoming stronger and more impregnable, which would of course make it more difficult for someone outside the vault to mess with the time lock.
Thank you for the point on the retro-fitting. That makes sense. I should’ve thought of it.
I’ve come across some really interesting and entertaining books by 19th century bank burglars, themselves, in Google books. Though some of them say they were reformed, they still talked about their exploits with so much pride of accomplishment. 🙂

Dean Nickel

Here is a plot that may work with those safes. Someone is working at the bank and makes a small modification of the lock so that it never really works for long and then it opens. But it is not apparent if you just look at the timelock. This would make it so the combination would work. Being it was an inside job they might have seen the combination over time. This way the person that was on the inside can be blameless and work there and leave a few weeks after the job was done to work with another bank somewhere else with a good record to do it all over again. Remember that inside theft is a bigger possable problem than outside in places like this.

This wouldn’t work today becouse of all the controls they have in place to stop this very thing.

girluknow

Halflock wrote
Here is a plot that may work with those safes. Someone is working at the bank and makes a small modification of the lock so that it never really works for long and then it opens. But it is not apparent if you just look at the timelock. This would make it so the combination would work. Being it was an inside job they might have seen the combination over time. This way the person that was on the inside can be blameless and work there and leave a few weeks after the job was done to work with another bank somewhere else with a good record to do it all over again. Remember that inside theft is a bigger possable problem than outside in places like this.

This wouldn’t work today becouse of all the controls they have in place to stop this very thing.

Yes, definitely not today. Vaults and locks were much more interesting a hundred years ago. Thank you for your suggestions. I’m going in a very similar direction, also using an “inside” job with bank robbers already knowing the combination beforehand. I just want to make sure the time lock slows them down a while.

[unknown]

Doug MacQueen

I’ve done a bit of research in the area you are interested in. Newbury was heavily involved in timelock protection and had numerous patents. Nitro was in already in use in the 1870’s but it was the technique of applying dynamite to the outside of the door to break or release the timelock that Newbury was interested in preventing. Doug

girluknow

Hi, Doug
Thanks very much for that confirmation. Do you know how much in common use his patents were in 1880’s? I’m assuming they were put into use with mixed results. At least that’s the impression I get. Do you think so?

Doug MacQueen

Hard to say but his research did not fall on deaf ears. Improvements were made in timelocks and the way they were mounted. The use of time lock controlled “automatics” popular in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s were most at risk because of the lack of the additional combination locks. What is it that you found about Newbury? I will try to go through some of his patents again. it has been a few years. Doug

Doug MacQueen

I have located 22 Newbury patents so far and I was incorrect in saying he was only concerned with timelock protection. A few had to do with combination lock mounting and methods of boltwork frame mountings. At least one of the patents looked like he may have introduced what we know today as a relocker. Is this what you have found on your Google research?