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Hall's Safe Co., Cincinnati, Ohio - 3 movements A background of the Hall company is described below to give context to this time lock. The Hall company was started by Joseph and his father in 1846 and engaged in the manufacturing of safes. After several incarnations due to changing shareholder interests, the name of the firm changed seven times until when in 1867 Joseph Hall became the majority stockholder and the name of the company became Hall's Safe & Lock Co. Seeing an opportunity in the emerging time lock business, Joseph Hall entered that business in 1875. His foresaw the potential for litigation and the turbulent market forces that accompanied this new and popular invention and so created the Consolidated Time Lock Co. in 1880 to insulate his safe business from the time lock business. A plan that other firms failed to take resulting in their demise primarily through litigation. In 1892 the Hall Safe and Lock Co. was sold becoming a part of a company under the name of Herring-Hall-Marvin Co. The three sons of Joseph Hall joined and were shareholders in this company. After a dispute between the brothers and the company the Hall brothers left in 1896 and went on to form a new company, the Hall's Safe Company. One can see how there might be some confusion between the name that was acquired by their former employer and the new name the Hall brothers created for their company; and litigation ensued. The Hall brothers prevailed in this suit and the Hall's Safe Co. is the subject of this time lock. This company operated until its bankruptcy in 1927. The Consolidated Time Lock Co. was not a part of the sale of the Hall Safe & Lock to Herring-Hall-Marvin Co. and stayed with the Hall family. Consolidated went on to produce time locks until its sale to the Victor Safe & Lock Co. in 1906 when that company introduced their line of time locks under a subsidiary by the name of Bankers Dust Proof Time Lock Co. based on the Consolidated designs. It is unknown if the Hall brother's company of Hall Safe Co. made any time locks between the sale of Consolidated to Victor Safe in 1906 and the example described on this page which is dated close to 1927 based on the illustrated patent. As of this writing, none appear to have been seen. On this page is illustrated two very similar time locks, the cases are identical but the movements and by extension the movement plate and snubber bars are different. What makes this interesting is the information on the patent drawing. The first time lock clearly has the Hall's logo and more interesting has movements by Harry Dalton, an employee of the Consolidated Time Lock Co. from about 1900 and perhaps after its sale to Victor Safe & Lock Co. in 1906. The patent drawing clearly shows a time lock to the case design of these two locks, but has movements that look a lot like Sargent and Greenleaf's H-movement. The patent was filed in 1924 and awarded over three years later in 1927, the year of Hall's departure. Were any examples made between the filing and awarding of the patent? The central theme of the patent refers to the scissors-type bolt dogging mechanism whose purpose is to more securely resist tampering of the bolt dog. I have made no study as to whether this was indeed a superior method to those already in use. So the question is, which of the two locks is original? It generally believed the Consolidated Time Lock Co. ceased production in 1906. Did Hall Safe Co. decide to take one more try at production? Or was the lock made by another company to the patent holder's specifications, maybe Sargent and Greenleaf, including what looks to be S&G H-movement locks? Did the original patent filing show the Dalton movements and the unaltered mounting plate and by the time the patent was granted a new illustration was made with S&G H-movements using the altered movement plate and snubber bar due to the fact that the Hall Safe Company had gone out of business and the Dalton movements with it? I have not been able to locate the 1924 filing.
The lock used an unusual bolt dogging design that used a scissor to seize and release the bolt work. The case is also unusual in that the rear is not a simple flat back but has a stepped profile. Was this lock made for a custom installation? I have not been able to associate a safe company model that would fit this configuration. Notice the simple butt-hinge design for the door. This harkens back to the very earliest time lock case designs and perhaps may have been a cost-cutting maneuver on the part of Hall at a time they were feeling financial pressures. It is certainly a departure from the clean and hidden hinge designs used by this and all other time lock manufacturers for the past many years.
The time lock linkages to the snubber bar are sector gears. The scissors are operated via a set of gears behind the two large silver discs. This is the only time lock I have seen that made the use of gearing rather than levers in its design. These time lock movements appear to be unique to this time lock and have not been seen before or since in any other time lock. The snubber design is the main thrust of William Benham's patent.
The interior view of the time lock movement reveals that a South Bend Watch Co. size 16s, Model 2, Grade 209, 9 jewel movement was used. South Bend was the movement supplier for Consolidated in 1906. But this is not the same type of movement used in their earlier models. This example uses a split movement plate where the prior movements were 15 jewel full plate with s stepped balance wheel cock.
Even though the logo on the door is Hall's Safe Co. it is not the same company as Hall's Safe & Lock Co. The latter was started in 1867 by Joseph Hall and the time lock business, Consolidated Time Lock Co. was created as a separate entity in 1880 to protect his safe and lock business from the rampant litigation that surrounded the time lock industry at the time. Consolidated may have been acquired by Victor Safe Co. in 1906, but this is not proven. ¹ It is unclear if this lock was made under the Consolidated firm. The name does not appear anywhere on the movement dials as it did on all prior examples but the case has the Hall Safe Co. name and a reference to Harry Dalton, an important employee of the Consolidated firm is seen on the dials as "DALTON PAT. PEND'G JANY 1921". It is unknown if this lock was originated by Hall or if the company was a subcontractor for the inventors W.T. Benham whose patent is illustrated above. That patent is dated June 24, 1927 but curiously was filed over three years earlier on May 16, 1924 and it is unclear what Dalton's earlier patent of January 1921 has to do with this design or if the original filing in 1924 had an illustration of the Dalton, rather than S&G H-movements. The author has been unable to locate the Dalton patent for verification.Was this time lock model the last to be made by the Hall Safe Co. company in 1924-1927 (see below)? Only a few were produced before the company's demise in 1927. This example is the only one the author knows of with the correct, original movements. ² The few remaining locks had over their years of service had been retrofitted to accept Sargent and Greenleaf size 'H' movements to continue their operation since there were no available movement replacements and the unique case and bolt dog configurations precluded an easy change out to a different time lock. A retrofit required all of the original movements to be discarded, see below. 6 1/8"w x 4 5/8"h x 3"d. (3" at widest point, 1 3/8"d at narrowest), Case #4, Movements, #10000, #10005, #10019. file 192
These photos show the current example with Sargent and Greenleaf, H-movements on the left and the first example above on the right with Milton Dalton movements; Dalton was an employee of Hall/Consolidated. There are several interesting things to note here. When looking at the movement mounting frame one can see in the S&G example what appears to be ad hoc gouges and drill holes to accommodate protrusions on the rear plate of the S&G movements (see photo below for further detail). On the other hand there are only three screw holes in the frame; precisely matching the configuration of the S&G movements whose holes do not match the Dalton movement's configuration. The photo on the right shows original screw holes to perfectly match the Dalton movements with no ad hoc fitting to the frame. Referring to the patent drawing there is no question the movements shown appear to S&G H-movements. But the movement frame on the left has a set of anti-shock springs, the one on the right has none and the patent drawing also shows none. The snubber bar configuration for the Hall example on the right more closely matches the patent drawing. Furthermore, time locks are usually designed to have very little space between the movements to make them more easily fit within the configurations of boltwork on the safe door. Notably see conversions by Andy Kotas on S&G older time locks have these spaces. But the patent drawing shows these spaces. So the questions are, which came first? The patent seems to show the S&G H-movements and these were available in 1927, but then why the ad-hoc work on the movement frame? The Dalton configuration's fabrication looks to be more original with no ad hoc work and the movement plate without springs, but the Dalton movements are not what are pictured in the patent drawing. It would be helpful to find the patent drawing for these, what appear to be unique movements to this time lock model and the patent date on the dial says 1921. Or was this a time lock that was not made by either S&G or Hall but were produced by the patent holder William T. Benham? I find the last to be unlikely.
This photo shows the alterations made to the movement plate to accommodate protrusions from the rear plates of the S&G movements, the bottom of each movement insert has a semi-circular milled area for the S&G spring barrel, however, notice how that area impinges so closely to the mounting hole on the lower right, even breaching the hole for the center opening. The movement plate did not require any alterations for the Dalton movements. At this time there are five known examples of this type of conversion. One is in the Harry Miller Collection, Nicholasville, KY with the others in private collections. There is only one example with what I believe are the original Harry Dalton movements. This is one of five examples known of this type of time lock equipped with the S&G's H-movements. In addition to the movement plate alterations the upper snubber bar has a pair of pins instead of a slot to connect to each movement. This alteration was certainly done by S&G as the movements are sequentially numbered and the altered snubber bar is a new fabrication, not the slotted bar being re-worked to the current configuration. 6 1/8"w x 4 5/8"h x 3"d. (3" at widest point, 1 3/8"d at narrowest), Case #18, Movements, #2723, #2724, #2725. file 329 |
(1) American Genius Nineteenth Century Bank Locks and Time Locks, David & John Erroll, pp. 314-317.
(2) This was the opinion of John Erroll from whom I had acquired this lock, that the Dalton locks were the original configuration with the S&G H-movements coming along later.
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