The art of the locksmith

The art of the locksmith

The art of the locksmith, or ‘locksmithing’ began as the science of making and defeating locks.  Most estimates date the earliest lock to around 4,000 years ago, and it is widely believed to be an Egyptian invention.  While the art dates back to the Egyptians, the actual term ‘Locksmith’ is much more recent.  It was in the early 1900s that some blacksmiths began to include lock making into their services, this led to some specialising in the making of locks and at this time the term ‘Locksmith’ was born.  The craft of the locksmiths in Britain was showcased when they became an invaluable resource for the war effort in the 1940s although this did mean that in this period few new locksmiths were trained as the professionals didn’t have the time due to large workload the war effort created.  Traditionally the locksmith would make the entire device, spending hours crafting the screws, filing the metal and creating the lock mechanism.  Another vital aspect of the locksmith’s work is also to determine the level of risk to an individual or institution and from this decide upon the complexity of the mechanism to involve a sufficient amount of ‘security layers’ to match the risk assessment.  Locksmiths come in many forms; some are commercial, some mobile, some institutional as well as the investigational forensic locksmiths. See Locksmith Henley

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