Читать книгу Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks онлайн

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These dial-locks have not been numerous; they require wheel and pinion work within the body of the lock, which gives delicacy and complication to the mechanism. The letter padlock, be its merits great or small, is strong and durable, not liable to get out of order; and in so far as it requires no key or key-hole, it occupies rather a special position among locks. One of our great “merchant-princes” has been a letter-lock inventor, as the following will shew.

Early in 1852, Mr. William Brown, the distinguished member for South Lancashire, read a paper before the Architectural and Archæological Society of Liverpool, of much interest in relation to our present subject. His object was to describe a letter-lock which he had invented, and which had up to that time given high satisfaction. We cannot do better than transcribe the paper, as reported in one of the Liverpool Journals, with a few abridgments.

“As your society are desirous of seeing any improvements or attempts at them, I send you a stock-lock for inspection. The idea for its construction I took from a letter-padlock. I had a lock of this description made by Mr. Pooley twenty-five years ago, which has been in use ever since on Brown, Shipley, and Co.’s safe....