biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1821–68)
|
| biography:
| Inventor and manufacturer, born in Salisbury, Connecticut, USA. He tried his hand at portrait painting and then began to assist his father in improving bank locks. By 1849 he had set up a small lock factory in Shelburne Falls, MA, and began to invent and manufacture a continuous series of improved locks, both for banks and private use. In 1851 he patented the first ‘double lock’ consisting of two locks within one case, operated by a key. He began to sell the ‘Monitor Bank Lock’ (c.1862), the first dial-operated combination lock, and he patented the Yale Double Dial Bank Lock (1863), the basis of bank safe locks still in use. In 1861 he patented a small cylinder lock with pin tumblers, operated by a key. This was the first modern pin-tumbler lock, though it was based on a mechanism used by the Egyptians as early as 2000BC, and he also patented an improved cylinder lock (1865), the basis of Yale locks in use today. With his Massachusetts factory busy making bank locks, in 1868 he formed a partnership with John H Towne and his son, Henry R Towne, and set up the Yale Lock Manufacturing Co in Stamford, CT to make cylinder locks. Yale died soon after the factory began production. |
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