Fig. 15.
the bolt is partly shot by the correct key, the screw which binds the sliders together as it comes opposite an opening in the back of the case is loosened, the key is removed and altered—or a fresh key substituted—and is inserted so as to lift the levers to their correct height and expose the clamping screw at the back, which is then tightened. This lock is now commonly used for safe deposits, combined with a small lever lock of which the custodian carries the key, and which either blocks the bolt of the main lock or covers the keyhole.
In connexion with changeable key locks requiring key steps of definite lengths, much ingenuity has been displayed in designing keys with movable bits or steps, as fig. 15, which are useful chiefly as duplicates, being built up to match the key from time to time in use, and then deposited in some bank or other secure place to be used in case of emergency.
From the very earliest times secret devices, either to hide keyholes or to take the place of locks proper, have been in use; these are to-day only seriously represented by “combination” locks which, whilst following the same general principles as key locks, differ entirely in Combination locks.construction. Locks in which the arranging of the internal parts in their proper positions was secured by the manipulation of external parts marked with letters or numbers were common in China in very early times, but their history is unfortunately lost. This form of lock has been developed to a very high degree of perfection and is, for safes, in almost universal use to-day in America.
The American lock consists of a series of disks mounted upon one spindle, only one, however—the bolt disk—being fixed thereto, and provided each with a gating into which a stump connected with the bolt can drop when all the gatings lie upon a given line parallel to the axis of the spindle. Each disk is provided with a driving pin so arranged that it can impinge on and drive a similar pin in its next neighbour; the gating in the bolt disk and the portion of the stump which enters it are so formed that the disk can draw the bolt back. The spindle is provided on the outside with a knob and graduated disk—usually with 100 divisions—surrounded by an annulus on which a fixed position is denoted. Each disk, including the bolt disk, is provided with a pin projecting from its surface in such a way that the pin of one disk comes into contact with that of the next disk and drives it round. If, then, the bolt disk being at the back, there are three letter disks and the spindle is rotated to the left, the bolt disk will in the course of one revolution pick up letter disk No. 1—counting from the bolt disk—in the second revolution it will pick up No. 2, and in the third No. 3, the revolution being continued for part of a turn till the number corresponding to the correct position of No. 3 is reached. The revolution of the spindle is now reversed. The bolt disk leaves No. 1 in the first revolution and picks it up again, and the second revolution picks up No. 2. The motion is continued for part of a revolution till No. 2 is brought to the correct position (No. 3 obviously not being disturbed) and is then reversed. No. 1 is again left behind and picked up in the first revolution to the left, the motion being continued till the correct position of No. 1 is reached, when, on reversal, the gating in the bolt disk comes into the correct position, the stump falls and a continuance of the motion to the right draws back the bolt. A lock constructed in this way would be of little utility, as the combination would have to be determined once for all by the maker. The difficulty is got over by making the letter disks in two parts, the inner part carrying the driving pin and the outer the gating; these two parts are locked together by small cams or other devices which come into such a position that they can be released with the help of a square key when the lock is unlocked. The combination is set by altering the position of the inner disks with the driving pins in relation to the outer part carrying the gatings which are meanwhile held steady by the square key.
One advantage of the combination lock is that there is no key to be lost or stolen, but the means adopted by burglars, especially in America, are such that even this is not a perfect protection, cases having occurred in which a person has been compelled to disclose the combination. With Time locks.key locks the keyhole through the safe door forms a distinct point of danger, and with combination locks the spindle passing through the door may be attacked by explosives. To obviate these two risks time locks were introduced in America and have been used in Europe. Essentially the time lock consists of a high-class chronometer or watch movement, little liable to get out of order, driving a disk provided with a gating such that the bolt can only enter the gating during certain hours; as a rule two, three or four chronometers are used, any one of which can release the lock.
The Yale time lock contains two chronometer movements which revolve two dial plates studded with twenty-four pins to represent the twenty-four hours of the day. These pins, when pushed in, form a track on which run rollers supporting the lever which secures the bolt or locking agency, but when they are drawn out the track is broken, the rollers fall down and the bolt is released. By pulling out the day pins, say from 9 till 4, the door is automatically prepared for opening between these hours, and at 4 it again of itself locks up. For keeping the repository closed over Sundays and holidays, a subsidiary segment or track is brought into play by which a period of twenty-four hours is added to the locked interval. Careful provision is made against the eventuality of running down or accidental stoppage of the clock motion, by which the rightful owner might be as seriously incommoded as the burglar. In the Yale lock, just before the chronometers run out, a trigger is released which depresses the lever by which the bolt is held in position. (A. B. Ch.)
LOCKE, JOHN (1632–1704), English philosopher, was born at Wrington, 10 m. W. of Belluton, in Somersetshire, on the 29th of August 1632, six years after the death of Bacon, and three months before the birth of Spinoza. His father was a small landowner and attorney at Pensford, near the northern boundary of the county, to which neighbourhood the family had migrated from Dorsetshire early in that century. The elder Locke, a strict but genial Puritan, by whom the son was carefully educated at home, was engaged in the military service of the parliamentary party. “From the time that I knew anything,” Locke wrote in 1660, “I found myself in a storm, which has continued to this time.” For fourteen years his education, more or less interrupted, went on in the rural home at Belluton, on his father’s little estate, half a mile from Pensford, and 6 m. from Bristol. In 1646 he entered Westminster School and remained there for six years. Westminster was uncongenial to him. Its memories perhaps encouraged the bias against public schools which afterwards disturbed his philosophic calm in his Thoughts on Education. In 1652 he entered Christ Church, Oxford, then under John Owen, the Puritan dean and vice-chancellor of the university. Christ Church was Locke’s occasional home for thirty years. For some years after he entered, Oxford was ruled by the Independents, who, largely through Owen, unlike the Presbyterians, were among the first in England to advocate genuine religious toleration. But Locke’s hereditary sympathy with the Puritans was gradually lessened by the intolerance of the Presbyterians and the fanaticism of the Independents. He had found in his youth, he says, that “what was called general freedom was general bondage, and that the popular assertors of liberty were the greatest engrossers of it too, and not unfitly called its keepers.” And the influence of the liberal divines of the Church of England afterwards showed itself in his spiritual development.
Under Owen scholastic studies were maintained with a formality and dogmatism unsuited to Locke’s free inquisitive temper. The aversion to them which he expressed showed thus early an innate disposition to rebel against empty verbal reasoning. He was not, according to his own account of himself to Lady Masham, a hard student at first. He sought the company of pleasant and witty men, and thus gained knowledge of life. He took the ordinary bachelor’s degree in 1656, and the master’s in 1658. In December 1660 he was serving as tutor of Christ Church, lecturing in Greek, rhetoric and philosophy.
At Oxford Locke was nevertheless within reach of liberal intellectual influence tending to promote self-education and strong individuality. The metaphysical works of Descartes had appeared a few years before he went to Oxford, and the Human Nature and Leviathan of Hobbes during his undergraduate years. It does not seem that Locke read extensively, but he was attracted by Descartes. The first books, he told Lady Masham, which gave him a relish for philosophy, were those of this philosopher, although he very often differed from him. At the Restoration potent influences were drawing Oxford and England into experimental inquiries. Experiment in physics became the fashion. The Royal Society was then founded, and we find Locke experimenting in chemistry in 1663, also in meteorology, in which he was particularly interested all his life.
