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:
“As soon as you are in a social setting, you better take away the key to the lock of your heart and pocket it; those who leave the key in the lock are fools.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“For I choose that my remembrances of him should be pleasing, affecting, religious. I will love him as a glorified friend, after the free way of friendship, and not pay him a stiff sign of respect, as men do to those whom they fear. A passage read from his discourses, a moving provocation to works like his, any act or meeting which tends to awaken a pure thought, a flow of love, an original design of virtue, I call a worthy, a true commemoration.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I hate the prostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances. I much prefer the company of ploughboys and tin-peddlers, to the silken and perfumed amity which celebrates its days of encounter by a frivolous display, by rides in a curricle, and dinners at the best taverns.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“... in a history of spiritual rupture, a social compact built on fantasy and collective secrets, poetry becomes more necessary than ever: it keeps the underground aquifers flowing; it is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)