I walk behind a luxury apartment high-rise where a locksmith’s van is parked. Not sure if the locksmith is there to provide a service or is a resident. Guess it would be a pretty good gig if you lived there and everyone knew you were a locksmith, calling you when they needed your services. You wouldn’t have to go very far. Unfortunately, I have had some experience with locksmiths, usually with my car. There was the time I got out of my car in my driveway while the car was running. When the door shut behind me, it locked. Fortunately, the locksmith arrived before too much gasoline had been wasted. Another time I accidentally locked the keys in the car at the Galleria Mall. I waited two hours in the parking garage for the locksmith to arrive. Then there was one Christmas in Oklahoma when I laid the car keys down in the trunk to retrieve my nephew’s Christmas present — golf clubs, and then promptly shut the trunk. I think I locked the keys in the car AGAIN a couple of days later. The local locksmith was very grateful for my business. Certain skills are required to be a locksmith. Let’s learn more about them.
According to Wikipedia, locksmithing is the science and art of making and defeating locks. Locksmithing is a traditional trade and in many countries requires completion of an apprenticeship. The level of formal education legally required varies from country to country from none at all to a simple training certificate awarded by an employer to a full diploma from an engineering college — such as in Australia — in addition to time spent working as an apprentice.
Terminology
A lock is a mechanism that secures buildings, rooms, cabinets, objects or other storage facilities. A "smith" is a metalworker who shapes metal pieces — often using a forge or mold — into useful objects or to be part of a more complex structure. Thus locksmithing, as its name implies, is the assembly and designing of locks and their respective keys by hand. Most locksmiths use automatic and manual cutting tools to mold keys; most are power tools having batteries or electricity as their power source.
History
According to the Sept. 27, 2020 article “A Brief History of Locksmithing and Locks” at workingtheflame.com, locksmithing is thought to have been born out of ancient Egypt and Babylon around 4,000 years ago. This makes locksmithing one of the oldest professions in history. Keys are mentioned in the Old Testament in the book of Judges, which was written in approximately 1170 BC.
The first locks made by early locksmiths were rather large and clumsy, and unlike locks made today, were constructed of wood. Pins within these locks could be manipulated with a wooden key. Locks were used by trade merchants and other travelers to protect their belongings from thieves. The oldest example of these ancient locks is from Assyria and is dated to around 704 BC.
Although ancient locks may seem clunky compared to modern mechanisms, they were the forerunners to more advanced systems and are thus important to acknowledge. Locks and keys eventually migrated to Greece, Rome and even as far as China.
The wealthy classes of Roman civilization kept their valuables locked away, and carried keys as rings to present their status to others. Excavations at Pompeii uncovered a number of keys and locks owned by upper class people.
According to the article “Roman door locks” at historicallocks.com, Roman engineers modernized Egyptian pin tumbler locks and other lock constructions by replacing the wooden parts with corresponding parts made of metal.
The clumsy Egyptian pin tumbler locks were transformed into elegant Roman pin tumbler locks of steel, fitted with an ingenious Roman invention — steel springs. The locks were often tiny masterpieces in terms of both precision and design. All Roman door locks can only be opened from one side.
According to the Sept. 27, 2020 article “A Brief History of Locksmithing and Locks” at workingtheflame.com, a major innovation occurred in locksmithing in the early Middle Ages — the widespread use of metal. Simple iron bolt locks became popular in England and spread across Europe and Asia throughout the medieval time period. An early example of a spring lock from the Middle Ages is one found in a Viking settlement near York, England dating from 850.
Other evidence of modernized locks and keys come from medieval art. Paintings and illuminated manuscripts depict padlocks and keys owned by nobles. The famous Bayeux Tapestry depicts a duke handing the keys of his town over to William the Conqueror. Written records from the 1300s also describe the purchase of locks and keys.
The aesthetics of locks improved dramatically between the 14th and 17th centuries and locksmiths became skilled metalworkers and began decorating products with ornate designs suitable for nobility. Chinese locksmiths often decorated their locks with detailed dragons and horses and presented their work as gifts to royalty.
Despite advancements in the appearance of locks and keys, it is worth noting that the actual mechanisms within these locks did not improve much during this time.
Despite a lack of extreme technical advancements during the Middle Ages, locksmiths still created strong locks and felt constant pressure to outwit thieves. One lock that was very important in this era was a fetterlock, which secured livestock within their pasture.
To discourage burglary in homes, locksmiths oftentimes installed more than one lock on a door. It was not uncommon for armories, treasuries and other important places to have up to a dozen locks on their doors. With husbands away at seemingly endless battles during the Middle Ages, women became the masters of the household keys and kept them on their person at all times.
During the Middle Ages, locksmiths worked within organized guilds. These guilds set the rules and guidelines by which locksmiths agreed to work. At first, locksmith businesses operated within blacksmith guilds, since their work involved similar materials and techniques.
Eventually, locksmiths formed their own guild and operated as separate from other metalworkers. Guilds stipulated that locksmiths work within city limits and that prices be set by mayors or city councils. The rules for locksmiths were particularly strict to prevent thievery and burglary by the locksmiths.
By the 1700s, metalworking and locksmithing advanced enough to improve the way locks worked. Robert Barron introduced the lever tumbler lock in 1778, which required more precision to open than its counterparts. This lock was thus more secure and is still in use today.
Other innovators of this time period include the Chubb brothers, Joseph Bramah and Linus Yale. Their locks were unpickable at the time and are still used by modern locksmiths.
According to Wikipedia, a Chubb detector lock is a type of lever tumbler lock with an integral security feature, a form of relocker, which frustrates unauthorized access attempts and indicates to the lock's owner that it has been interfered with. When someone tries to pick the lock or to open it using the wrong key, the lock is designed to jam in a locked state until — depending on the lock — either a special regulator key or the original key is inserted and turned in a different direction. This alerts the owner to the fact that the lock has been tampered with.
Any person who attempts to pick a detector lock must avoid triggering the automatic jamming mechanism. If the automatic jamming mechanism is accidentally triggered — which happens when any one of the levers is lifted too high — lock-pickers have the additional problem of resetting the detector mechanism before their next attempts to open the lock. This introduces additional complexity into the task which slows the process down significantly, thereby increasing the degree of lock-picking skill required to a level which very few people would have. The first detector lock was produced in 1818 by Jeremiah Chubb of Portsmouth, England, as the result of a government competition to create an unpickable lock. It remained unpicked until the Great Exhibition of 1851.
After attending some lectures on technical aspects of locks, Bramah designed a lock of his own, receiving a patent for it in 1784. In the same year he started the Bramah Locks Co. at 124 Piccadilly, which is today based in Fitzrovia, London and Romford, Essex.
The locks produced by his company were famed for their resistance to lock-picking and tampering, and the company famously had a "Challenge Lock" displayed in the window of their London shop from 1790 mounted on a board containing the inscription:
The artist who can make an instrument that will pick or open this lock shall receive 200 guineas the moment it is produced.
The challenge stood for over 67 years until, at the Great Exhibition of 1851, the American locksmith Alfred Charles Hobbs was able to open the lock and, following some argument about the circumstances under which he had opened it, was awarded the prize. Hobbs' attempt required some 51 hours, spread over 16 days.
Hobbs went to London as a representative of the New York company of Day & Newell, which was exhibiting at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Hobbs had brought with him his boss's (Robert Newell) Parautoptic lock, designed to compete with, and surpass, the locks available at the time in Britain. He was the first one to pick Bramah's lock and the Chubb detector lock at the Great Exhibition of 1851 and forced the lock manufacturers to improve their designs.
After some regular education, Yale Jr. joined his father in the lock business, introducing some revolutionary locks that utilized permutations and cylinders. In 1858, Yale's father died, and Linus Yale Jr. became more involved with his father's lock company. He opened his own shop about 1860 in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, specializing in bank locks.
He later founded a company with Henry Robinson Towne in the South End section of Stamford, Connecticut, called the Yale Lock Manufacturing Co. Throughout his career in lock manufacturing, Yale acquired numerous patents for his inventions and received widespread acclaim from clients regarding his products. His basic lock design is still widely distributed today and constitutes a majority of personal locks and safes.
According to the Sept. 27, 2020 article “A Brief History of Locksmithing and Locks” at workingtheflame.com, locksmithing proved to be both a profitable profession for working class men and a hobby for royalty like Louis XVI of France. While better known for being one of France’s weakest kings, Louis was mechanically brilliant and excelled at locksmithing in his free time.
The king learned what he knew from his royal locksmith Francois Gamain and commissioned a lockbox for sensitive documents. Louis’s interest in locksmithing as a royal person was considered unusual and was commented on frequently by his contemporaries.
The work of 18th century locksmiths closely resembled that of blacksmiths and other metalworkers. The skills required by these craftsmen overlapped quite a bit, and workers were expected to understand the basics of locks and keys, regardless of their title. Locksmiths used a forge and anvil, and blacksmiths knew how to make simple locks and keys. However, locksmiths at this time were also skilled with lathe-turning, spring-tempering, screw-making, fitting and hole-punching, among other industry-specific techniques.
Despite many innovations during this time period, locksmithing underwent its most serious change as mass production and large-scale industry became the default and pushed small craftsmen out of business. Many locksmiths adapted by becoming repairmen and advertising themselves as specialists.
Key replication and locksmithing for large banks and companies became more widespread. These roles continue to be popular today as modern locksmiths contend with constant industry advancements and new security threats.
Locksmith scam
The locksmith scam is a multifaceted scam, targeting people who call a locksmith out of desperation, usually because of being locked out of their car or premises. Locksmith scams have been reported in the U.S., the U.K. and New Zealand.
The scams work by flooding business-finding services with a multitude of false business listings. All phone numbers of these listings eventually link back to a single operation, usually without a legitimate address or license. The descriptions will be similar to legitimate locksmiths, accompanied by similarly misleading advertising and usually quoting an unusually low price. The person who turns up may perform shoddy work and then overcharge for the service and parts. Since the customer never knows the real business or people involved, at best they can ask for a single phony listing to be removed — a process that takes time and does not negatively impact the scammer much, as they can simply create more fake listings.
Side effects of the scam include damage to legitimate locksmiths who lose business and tend to get angry calls from people believing them to be responsible. Google Maps has been particularly vulnerable to this operation in the 2010s. It began requiring people advertising locksmith services in the U.S. or Canada to complete its "Advanced Verification" process as of 2018 but does not do so in other markets. Locksmiths and other observers have noted that search engine companies make substantial income from paid-for listings, regardless of whether the listings are legitimate or spam. Writing in 2016, Canadian-British blogger and journalist Cory Doctorow claimed that "Nearly every locksmith that appears on Google Maps is a fake business that redirects to a call center ... that dispatches a scammy, distant, barely trained locksmith who'll come and charge you 5-10 times more than you were quoted."
Such scams may involve:
- Lead generation, designed to confuse potential customers into believing that the scammer is a legitimate, but low- priced, locksmith:
· Creating websites, search engine
advertisements and business directory listings designed to resemble those of legitimate locksmiths.
· Using retouched photographs depicting locksmith stores at locations where no store actually exists.
· Procuring dishonest reviews.
· Using names similar or identical to those of legitimate locksmiths.
· Using addresses that are either fictitious, are P. O. boxes or belong to an existing home or business — sometimes, but not always, a locksmith business.
· Driving up the price of online advertisements to make them unaffordable for legitimate locksmiths. Locksmith businesses are among those worst affected by click fraud.
· Calls being routed to a call center, rather than to an actual locksmith.
· Unrealistically low prices advertised or quoted by the call center, together with the caveat, "and up."
- Lead conversion, in which the mark is bluntly persuaded to part with money:
· Using vehicles that have no signage or only magnetic stick-on signage to reduce accountability.
· Using staff lacking identification or uniforms again to reduce accountability.
· Disinterest in the customer's right to access the vehicle or building to which the call-out relates; for example, failing to ask the customer for ID or proof of ownership.
· Refusing to provide a written estimate, also to reduce accountability.
· Insisting upon the use of destructive rather than non-destructive entry, typically by destroying the original lock and necessitating the purchase of a replacement lock.
· Charging excessive prices, even if low prices were advertised or quoted by the call center i.e., bait-and-switch.
If you want to install innovative locks on your vehicles, office, or home always hire Emergency Locksmith Myrtle Beach experts because they have the capability to deal with all types of locks at an affordable cost.