Book "American Genius", D. & J. Erroll, English

Nineteenth-Century Bank Locks and Time Locks

On West 44th Street in New York City, on the second floor of the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen building, rests an extraordinary display of American craftsmanship and ingenuity from the nineteenth Century: the John Mossman Collection of bank vault locks and time locks.
Designed to protect America's riches from every threat, these beautiful devices embody the evolution of lock technology during the nineteenth Century, its most creative period. Many of the handcrafted masterpieces are elaborately decorated with intricate engraving and casting, despite the fact that their mechanical interiors would rarely be seen. They reflect the great pride in creative workmanship and the mechanical genius that characterized American industry at the time.
The famous Parautoptic lock with its eighty-three moving parts remained unpickable for ten years until Linus Yale learned its weaknesses and exposed them to the public in the pages of the Boston Post. The Double Pin Dial time lock of 1875 could be set to lock or unlock automatically at every hour of each day, and for an extra $50, a "Sunday Attachment" would allow the lock to remain locked every seventh day. With the United States' entry into World War I, safes and their locks were often melted down; as a result the Mossman Collection is horne to many one-of-a-kind masterpieces.
American Genius is the most complete survey of these marvels of complexity and their dramatic history. Detailed text by Mossman Collection curator John Erroll and his son David is illustrated by more than four hundred luminous photographs, the first formally approved color imagery of the collection, by Anne Day. Drawing on newly uncovered original sources, the authors offer an in-depth look at the incredible range of the lockmaker's art, from some of the most complex key mechanisms to the most advanced four-movement time locks.
American Genius is a meticulous and fascinating exploration of a remarkable but little-known chapter in American technological achievement.
John Erroll is the curator of the John Mossman Lock Collection. A retired clinical psychologist, he lives in Sayville, New York.
David Erroll, an attorney, shares his father's interest in time locks, and divides his time between New York City and Long Island.