Читать книгу Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks онлайн

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It was to be expected that in the Encyclopédie Méthodique, published in the same country and in the same century, the locksmith’s art would be treated at some such length as in the work just described. Among the two hundred volumes of which the Cyclopédie consists, several are devoted to arts and manufactures; and one of them contains the article in question. It occupies 168 quarto pages, and is illustrated by 35 copper-plate engravings, shewing in detail not only the parts of various locks, but the tools used by the lockmaker. It is proper, however, to remark, that much of the letterpress and many of the plates relate to smith’s work generally, and not exclusively to lock-work; the French name serrurerie being applied not only to lock-making, but to most of the smith’s work required in dwelling-houses. This affords, indeed, a striking illustration of the fact, that until lately a lock-maker has been regarded rather as a smith than as a machinist, rather as a forger and filer of pieces of iron, than as a fabricator of delicate mechanism. One of the most curious features in this treatise is a vocabulary, containing, in alphabetical arrangement, a minute account of all the French technical terms employed in the locksmith’s art. This vocabulary alone occupies 38 quarto pages.