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Hall's Safe & Lock Co, Cincinnati, Ohio - 1 mvt.
The first video is a demonstration of the Hall safe & Lock Company's Chronometric Attachment™ a delayed action feature. Basically this is a rotating lever that can be moved manually, clockwise and is attached to a center ratchet gear mounted to the center wining arbor. One can use this to allow one to keep the lock off guard for a number of hours after the time lock has been set. In other words one can set the lock to be on guard for the next 14 hours by winding the timer to 14 hours. And then set the rotating lever to 2 on the dial. The safe can then be used for the next two hours with the combination lock and after that time the lock will go on guard for the remaining 12 hours. This lets the operator to preset the lock before closing time. The second video is a demonstration of the Hall Infallible Lockout Protection™ system. Single movement by this company that was the predecessor of the Consolidated Time Lock Company c.1878. Time locks made under the Hall name are rare as this company was only in business a few years before being merged into the Consolidated Time Lock Co. in January of 1880 to insulate his successful safe and lock business from his risky and untested time lock business.¹ Actually, only the name changed as the time locks themselves were identical. All of Hall's and Consolidated's single movement time locks were designed to be operated with Hall's Infallible lockout protection system which allowed the safe owner to open the safe should the single movement fail. A rare but very real possibility. One would call the Hall company for a "secret combination" that when dialed in along with the regular combination would override the stopped time lock. This was done to lower the cost associated with another movement. Soon, however, timer redundancy of two or more movements replaced the single timer obviating the need for extra override features. Compare to the same style lock, with hand engraving under the Consolidated name. The example above has a case with it's plating in excellent condition and a rare hand engraved, whimsical folk art picture and flowering vines rather than the machined geometric guilloche scroll work found in later movement cases. Another example of this unique folk art engraving is displayed in a larger two movement Consolidated case. Only eight of these hand engraved cases are currently known. Case #2644. Movement #2460, 3 5/8" w x 3 1/8" h x 2 5/8" d. file 58
(1) American Genius Nineteenth Century Bank Locks and Time Locks, David & John Erroll, pp. 166-168. |
