1887: Harry Soref is born. The inventor will miniaturize the security of a bank vault into the everyday padlock.

As a young man, Soref earned his living as a traveling locksmith in the United States, Canada and Mexico. During World War I, he invented a special padlock for protecting tanks and other military equipment.

Soref established the Master Key Company to produce skeleton keys, but he had an idea to improve padlocks at no great expense. Most padlocks of the time had cheap metal casings that you could easily bust open with a hammer. Security? Hah!

Building a padlock from thicker steel would be expensive. Instead, Soref applied the design of bank vaults and battleships: Use multiple layers of thin pieces of steel in a laminated construction. In his patent filing, he said: “A great advantage which flows from my invention is that the material employed in the production of the laminations is available to the manufacturer without any cost attached thereto. Such laminations are punched from the small ’scrap’ which is created in very large quantities in manufacturing establishments operating punching presses.”

Soref tried to interest big hardware companies in the idea, but engineers thought the construction process was too cumbersome. So, with backing from a couple of friends, Soref established the Master Lock Company in 1921 and began building the little devils himself in a small Milwaukee shop — with five employees, a drill press, a grinder and a punch press.

The locks — patented in 1924 — were tough, and the company prospered. Corporate lore says Soref taught Harry Houdini how to hide keys under his tongue and between his fingers.

Milwaukee was famous for its beer, but Prohibition was in force. When the growing firm needed larger quarters, it moved into the shut-down Pabst brewery. Master Lock sent a famous shipment of 147,600 padlocks to federal agents in New York City in 1928, and the irony was not lost on many that speakeasies and distilleries were soon shut down and secured with locks made in a former brewery.

The American Association of Master Locksmiths in 1931 awarded Soref’s many achievements with the only gold medal it has ever bestowed.

Soref died in 1957 and never saw Master Lock’s famous 1974 Super Bowl commerical. It featured a high-powered rifle shooting a hole through a sturdy Master Lockwithout opening it.

Source: Various

Image: Patent No. 1,490,987 for the laminated steel lock, 1924. (US Patent Office)

This article first appeared on Wired.com March 2, 2009.

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