Laminated Lock Design and Company History
Before founding the company in 1921, Harry Soref had been a traveling locksmith in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, had invented a lock for protecting military equipment, and had founded the "Master Key" company for making master "skeleton" keys. In 1919, Soref then invented a padlock design that used laminated steel layers to economically produce an exceptionally strong lock body. He initially tried to get some large companies interested in using his design, but was unsuccessful, so he recruited financial backing from two friends, P. E. Yolles and Sam Stahl, and founded the Master Lock company in 1921 to produce the locks himself, initially with five employees. In 1924, he was granted the first patent on such a laminated lock design. He led the company to become a major manufacturer of locks before his death in 1957. However, the brand had not yet reached its peak status as an iconic, universally-familiar consumer brand at the time of his death. Sam Stahl, one of the original investors, then led the company until he also died in 1964. The Soref family then took over the company management, later selling the company to the American Brands Corporation in 1970.
Read more about this topic: Master Lock
Famous quotes containing the words lock, design, company and/or history:
“They learned to rattle the lock and key
To give whatever might chance to be,
Warning and time to be off in flight:”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“You can make as good a design out of an American turkey as a Japanese out of his native stork.”
—For the State of Illinois, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“... possibly there is no needful occupation which is wholly unbeautiful. The beauty of work depends upon the way we meet it—whether we arm ourselves each morning to attack it as an enemy that must be vanquished before night comes, or whether we open our eyes with the sunrise to welcome it as an approaching friend who will keep us delightful company all day, and who will make us feel, at evening, that the day was well worth its fatigues.”
—Lucy Larcom (1824–1893)
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)