The Padlock That Made a Man Wealthy

hey 42 here as another steamy dawn broke over a gorge in London in 1790 and unassuming but marvelous inventor proudly placed a new feature in his shop front in one to four Piccadilly it was a black wooden plaque inscribed with beautiful golden hand lettering that read the artist who can make an instrument that will pick or open this lock shall receive 200 guineas the moment it is produced at the top of the board was mounted a circular iron padlock and the item with which security lived and died this was a challenge to all passers-by whoever could successfully pick this lock would be awarded 200 guineas worth over twenty thousand pounds today its creator was so confident that he had produced the world's first totally unpickable lock Joseph Bramah was born on a farm in Barnsley Yorkshire but his fascination for invention and the newly born field of mechanical engineering brought him to London he started out his career making cabinets and an improved water closet which overcame a perennial issue that many wealthy Lu owners in London were having the water in the toilet froze in the colder months which led to some unfortunate side effects Brahmas new water closet design which he created with his boss mr. Allen was so successful that it was produced for over 100 years until more modern designs arrived in the late 19th century when a certain mr. crapper came along Brahmas water closet was even supplied to Queen Victoria and a working model can still be found in her most favorite residence Osborne house on the Isle of Wight Brahma also invented the hydraulic press so you can thank him for the countless hours you've spent watching various household objects being obliterated on YouTube he also drew up plans for an early fountain pen invented the beer engine which allowed beer to be pumped up to the taps in the bar unless the kegs could be kept in the cool cellar below and he invented the first machine that allowed banknotes to have a unique sequential number printed on each one quite the incredible inventor he was but it was a foray in the 1780s with which Brammer left his most famous legacy he attended a series of lectures on locks and became obsessed with them in 1784 he started the brahmalok company at 124 Piccadilly where he would design manufacture and sell his own proprietary locks locks up to this point were absolute shite amazingly the first pin and tumbler lock where the key must raise bolts to a very specific height freeing the barrel so that it can freely rotate and lock the basis of the same design we use today were first created 6,000 years ago in ancient Egypt they were constructed from wood and as remarkable as this was for the time they were predictably on secure the Greeks and Romans built on this technology very slightly but since the first century until the 18th century absolutely no progress was made at all unlock design for thousands of years locks were painfully simple to pick they could indeed be picked with a single wooden stick they were so easy in fact that during the Middle Ages security consisted of creating a series of fake keyholes on doors with the hope that there would be lock breaker would try the wrong keyhole first then just give up and go home seriously Joseph Bramah set out to create the world's first unpickable lock but there was good reason why no such luck yet existed engineering up to this point was incredibly imprecise all pots were hammered out by hands then filed down to the appropriate size and shape this meant that if a factory produced a hundred iron door handles per day then each one would be of greatly different dimensions and each would have their own unique imperfections this imprecision impeded the improvement of very small mechanisms such as locks actually it is a testament to the great imprecision of engineering in the mid 18th century that the word mechanism was only now coming into existence luckily for Brahma he employed an 18-year old assistant in his workshop who would soon go on to change the world Henry Maudsley Maudsley was a bright and highly inquisitive young man who working with Brahma invented the world's first machine tools that is a machine that can create very precise parts for other machines by cutting boring grinding or shearing metals one of the most influential and useful of Maude's lee's machine tools was the metal lathe which enabled the production of standardised screw sizes and interchangeable parts without mod sleaze innovations mass production and the Industrial Revolution would not have been possible almost every single item in your house and on your driveway today would not exist but that's a story for another time this video is about Brahma Brahma used the new machine tools he and Moseley had created to design and mass-produce a new series of Brahma lakhs to sell in his shop for discerning London as a need of better security the locks all had interchangeable parts and was so precisely machines that apart from the lock combination no two were different which although very normal today at the time was groundbreaking Brahmas lakhs employed a patented design with a cylindrical barrel and a number of wafers tiny slices of spring-loaded metal that would push themselves into the center of the barrel only when the correct tubular key was inserted pushing the wafers outside of the barrel could the lock rotate and thus open Brahma took his lock design and created one particular lock with 18 wafers meaning that there were 470 million possible permutations for the wafers and only one of those could open the lock this would be his challenge lock that he placed proudly in his shop window so secure he thought that no man alive or two could pick it open and he was so confident that he was willing to put 200 guineas on it many tried many expert locksmiths from the world over and laymen alike took up the challenge but it's extremely numerous 18 wafers and it's tricky she Buehler design fooled even the very best it quickly grew in Fame and the world's media reported on the world's first unpickable lock it would appear that the idea of perfect security a security system that cannot be breached had been achieved in fact by the time Joseph Bramah died aged 66 the lock still remained as stoically unpacked at which point his children took over his business it would be almost seventy years since its carnation that the brahma challenged lock would meet its match the British government particularly its various security divisions and its prison service were intensely interested in Brahmas lock but they had an added requirement for an impeccable lock they wanted a lock that could alert the owner if a peeking attempt had been made so any attempted break-ins at various government institutions could be detected the British government was so eager to acquire such technology especially after a portsmouth dockyard was burgled in 1817 that they held a nationwide competition offering a one hundred pound reward eight thousand pounds today for anyone who could invent such a lock a year later a man named Jeremiah Chubb stepped forward to claim the reward he had invented what he named the Chubb detector lock it was reportedly both unpickable and would also alert the owner to an attempted break-in by jamming itself during a pickin attempt and after it had been jammed it could then only be unlocked even by the owner by first resetting the detector mechanism with a special regular Tukey the British government were impressed but they wanted to test its real-life effectiveness before and playing the Chubb detector lock across the country so they came up with a rather unconventional test the gays a lock to a prisoner in Portsmouth who is considered a leading expert in lock picking he was a locksmith by trade and had been able to pick every single lock he had ever come across if he could successfully pick the lock the government were prepared to release him from prison and give him 100 pound the man's freedom was quite literally at stake he tried tirelessly for free mumps in his cell but could not pick the detector lock and he threw in the towel so impressed with the British government that the chip detector lock became the de facto industry standard lock for Britain and was used in prisons post offices government buildings and by hundreds of private corporations with the chip detector lock and Brahmas challenge lock it seemed the world had to own pickable locks that was until the great slot controversy of 1851 the Great Exhibition the world's first international show of technology organized by Queen Victoria's husband Albert was held after the specially built Crystal Palace in Hyde Park in October of 1851 new technologies from every corner of the earth were on display amongst all the spectacles on exhibit were Brahmas challenge lock which by this point had gone on picked for 67 years and the Chubb detector lock a pioneering American locksmith and lock salesman Alfred C Hopps made a special trip on a steamship from Washington to sell his own products at the London exhibition but secretly he had another more alluring motive he had come to be the first map to pick the unpickable locks upon arriving at the Great Exhibition Hobbs remarkably managed to pick the Chubb detector he did this by repeatedly tripping the detector mechanism and then picked it again to reset the mechanism each time he did this he learned more and more about how the device worked until he was eventually able to open the lock itself using basic lock-picking tools hops then picked it again in front of a fascinated crowd in only seven minutes and with this the belief in the impenetrable security of the nation had evaporated but for Hobbes this was only a warm-up act the true prize was the 67 year old unbreakable challenge the Brahma so important to the government Joseph Brahmas children's business and the idea of true security to the entire world was the imperviousness of the Brahma challenge lock that a committee was set up to determine rules for Hobbes attempt the rules were as follows Hobbes had 30 days to attempt the challenge the lock was affixed to a wall to limit access to only the keyhole and the hasp the key was to be locked away during the attempt whenever the lock was left unattended the keyhole was to be covered by an item buttoned if Hobbes was successful he had to prove that the key could once again lock and open the padlock to prove that he hadn't opened it through damage Hobbes would have to carry out the attempt in a room above Brahmas shop and a moderator would periodically check in on him this was obviously a serious affair and much more than 200 guineas were at stake and Hobbes was taking it seriously he had brought with him specially made tiny mirrors so small they could fit inside the keyhole to lock and diamond tools over the next 16 days and the total of 51 hours Hobbes slaved away to pick the unpickable and on the 23rd of August 1851 the short age of perfect security ended Hobbes had picked open Brahmas lock without any damage the event has gained the name the great Locke controversy of 1851 because the committee's initial forms were that Hobbes had completed this challenge in such a controlled environment it was such a prolonged period that it was entirely or representative of a real-life burglary they were not pleased yet the two hundred guineas were but grudgingly handed over but with it they also handed over the end of a time when a man could put a lock on his front door and feel safe in the knowledge that nobody could get in at least not without brute force there has never again been a lot that has remained unpicked for so long even the most cutting edge locks today are unlikely to last a fraction of the time as Brahmas I've recently launched my first book which I'm crowdfunding stick a flag in it a thousand years of bizarre history from Britain and beyond the crowdfunding campaign has reached a hundred percent so it's definitely going to be published thanks to everyone who has pledged but there are still stretch goals to reach so if you want a first edition signed copy then head on over to UM bounds the links in the description watch the launch video if you haven't already and pledge today thank you

Channel: Thoughty2

Views: 983,498

Rating: 4.7571011 out of 5

Keywords: bramah lock, lockpicking, locks

Id: zHMhPj-gDDY

Length: 14min 27sec (867 seconds)

Published: Wed May 29 2019