What Was He Thinking II

[wylk]

In the same spirit as the original thread “What Was He Thinking,” I found an interesting patent for a double-door vault. US patent 1,104,765 by Harry F. Baloun (July 28, 1914) describes an arrangement with two separate doors, one in front of the other.

The outer door is fairly conventional for the round and massive styles, using two combination locks and 24 bolts. It’s mounted on a large crane hinge and has a 3-point pressure system.

What is different is that behind this is a second door, also with 24 bolts, operated purely by a time lock and an automatic bolt motor. This door is not hinged or mounted to the frame in any way (aside from being locked in place by the bolts). Rather, it has a few bolts on the outside that connect it to the inside surface of the outer door. While the doors are closed and locked, these bolts are not connected so that the inner door is no longer connected to the outer door, and opening the outer door only exposes the inner door instead of carrying it along for the ride. Only when the time lock unlocks the inner door will it be connected to the outer door.

This patent is also interesting because it’s the last round-door patent I’ve found.

Were any of these monsters constructed? I can imagine lots of manufacturing issues to get everything lined up and spaced just right.

[Dean Nickel]

Wow. I have to say that the KISS principal wasn't followed here. I can see that if they did make this and it was to fail to "Go along" with the outer door could have fatal results. "Here let me open the door" BANG! SMASH! SQUISH!

[wylk]

The design does include interlocks to prevent accidental problems, but I agree the complexity would make me nervous. Complex systems can fail in unanticipated ways, and here the consequences could be significant. BTW there's an interesting book that explores this called "Systemantics", see for example Systemantics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

[Doug MacQueen]

That is a good one. I had recently downloaded that but haven't had time to check it out. Around the same time that the auto bolt motors came into widespread use, it became popular to use a heavy inner vault door in addition to the outer door. Both of these changes were to thwart nitro attacks. In some cases the inner door was close in thickness as the outer. By the 1920's this practise was given over in favor of just one bigger door. But in the cannonball market starting with Ely Norris the inner and outer door idea did catch on except Sumner Ely, formerly of Hibbard Rodman Ely, built it as one compound door having an airspace between the two sections. Diebold also patented a door like this but I have yet to see one. I have seen a Diebold cannonball with a heavy outer and inner door owned by Irving Isacoff. There was also a patent for a round door cannonball that was virtually the same idea as the vault patent you have pictured. I will try to dig that up. Doug

[Doug MacQueen]

The interconnected double door cannonball patent number is 862,236 by William Corry for Chrome Steel Works of New Jersey. On the vault door it does seem a risky idea but quite a bit less so for a cannonball. I have never even heard of this company but would bet that this design was made. I noticed the vault door designers were located in Canton, OH. the hometown of Diebold. And thanks for that book tip. Doug