Patent Model For A Lock, Patent No. 32,330 (USA)

This object is not part of the Cooper Hewitt's permanent collection. It was able to spend time at the museum on loan from National Museum of American History as part of Tools: Extending Our Reach.

Today, we still use Linus Yale Jr.’s nineteenth-century designs for locks. He was thirty years old when he gave up painting portraits to follow his father into lock making in 1850; his earliest efforts were directed mainly to improving locks for bank safes. Yale’s handmade, expensive mechanical devices established his reputation as a gifted designer, while his ideas evolved continuously to stay one step ahead of clever lock pickers and safe crackers. In the 1860s Yale designed and patented the locks and key so familiar to us today—the cylinder lock, the narrow serrated key that opens it, and the modern combination lock. In 1868, he established the Yale Lock Manufacturing Company with Henry R. Towne in Stamford, Connecticut, where the manufacture of locks was transformed from craft to mass production.

This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibition Tools: Extending Our Reach.