Early Lockpicking and False Gates?

[Adrian Weber]

I always thought false gates were introduced around 1900 or maybe 1880 but recently I had a very interesting conversation with Brian Morland. He made me aware that my guess is completely wrong. Looking at the following Walton lock:

http://www.antique-locks.com/showthread.php/2546-Walton
http://www.antique-locks.com/attachm...3&d=1373202404

You may notice the false gates on it. I believe Brian said that this is the earliest lever lock with false gates he knows of. Do you know any earlier models featuring this kind of detail?

Having false gets leads me to the idea that they already feared evil lock manipulators (Not saying that lock pickers are evil this sentence was meant for the lock pickers with bad intentions only! Or criminals.)
I wonder if lockpickers do know about this early appearance of false gates in a lock :)

Adrian

[Dean Nickel]

I read it somewhere that it came out sometime around the latter part of the 1700s, without a sample to pin it down this will be hard to prove. Fun to discuss and maybe someone has something.

[Brian Morland]

Certainly this is the earliest lock in the collection featuring false notches. Notice also the heavy warding. Both levers and warding are straight forward to defeat, but when false notched levers are combined with warding in the same lock such as in this example, attributed to Walton, it becomes quite challenging.

[Doug MacQueen]

Not having access to early British patents makes it hard to determine, but if the false gating was claimed as part of Walton's patent, then odds are he was the first. From what I can see of the lock, that is the mechanical improvement. Economically, false gating is a fast and easy way to increase security, much easier than adding complex warding or more tumblers. Doug

[Adrian Weber]

Really interesting I wonder if there is any proof of lock pickers/manipulators of these times :)? Or maybe old dicuments, traces, leads

[Doug MacQueen]

If you mean for the challenge alone, the earliest example that I am aware of, is the description of one of Bramahs employees picking one of his locks. I think that occurred in 1816 and resulted in false gating being applied to the sliders. The tentative method is mentioned in an Encyclopedia Britannica from the 1830's, long before A.C. Hobbs went to England. If this earlier period (late 1700-early 1800's) in lock history is anything like what follows later, then it is almost a guarantee that it was people within the industry that forced security improvements in the locks, and not was happening in the criminal world. Doug

[Adrian Weber]

Sounds really interesting Doug.

Encyclopedia Britannica from the 1830's,

Any chance that you can scan that part where this is mentioned and upload it here?

[Doug MacQueen]

This is where I first found that mentioned. !857 EB and good for a laugh too. Doug

[Doug MacQueen]

Sorry about the poor pic. I will try to post a better one later today. Doug

[Doug MacQueen]

here it is