1851 print article from the Illustrated London News about Newell and Chubb locks and safes exhibited during the Great Exhibition in Crystal Palace, UK.

c.1862 Chatwood Safe Company Double Patent solid brass safe plate, made in England.

c.1880 Nettlefold & Sons ‘A1 Guardian Lock’ patent solid brass safe plate, made in England.

c.1880 Wiedemar cast iron and steel secure cabinet with 5-lever, 3 bolt locking mechanism, made in Bern, Switzerland.

1887 advertisement for the Chancery Lane Safe Deposit centre in London.

c.1900 Forestier Freres solid brass escutcheon from a steel high-security safe, made in France. This keyhole cover, or ‘escutcheon’, is finely decorated with a brass plate displaying the Forestier company’s name, address and coat-of-arms type logo. Aside from its decorative value, this plate also protects the keyhole from damage, dirt, dust and moisture.

c.1900 Ed. Tanton Sedan solid brass escutcheon for a steel ‘Le Vainqueur’ safe, made in Paris, France.

c.1910 Herring Hall Marvin Safe Co. wheel pack cover brass plaque, made in Ohio, USA.

1911 advertisement for Ratner Safe Company Ltd strong rooms and safes.

1911 advertisement for Yale & Towne Manufacturing Company time delay locks for vaults. The time delay lock featured has four movements, providing both a great degree of redundancy and enabling the device to be set – preventing access to the vault – for up to 12 days (288 hours, 72 hours per movement).

1913 print advertisement for Ratner Safe Company Ltd strong rooms and safes.

1913 print advertisement for Chubb & Son’s Lock & Safe Co. Treasury Doors. This advertisement specifies some of the key security features used in Chubb bank vault doors, including strengthened steel; protection against oxyacetylene torches and similar high-intensity heat-cutting tools; and hermetically sealing mechanism protecting against fire, water and liquid explosives.

c.1920 Mosler Safe Company time delay lock with a 72-hour movement, made for a bank’s strongroom door in the USA.

c.1915 Fichet brass safe plates, made in France.

1922 print advertisement for Chatwood Safe Company Ltd. The 21-tonne vault door pictured was installed in the basement vaults of the newly opened headquarters of Midland Bank at 27 Poultry in the City of London, which at the time was the biggest clearing bank in the world. As mentioned in the article, the vault was also fitted with an intruder alarm system connected directly to the police.

c.1925 A&R Wiedemar solid brass, chrome-plated escutcheon for a steel high-security safe, made in Switzerland. This escutcheon is designed for a double-bitted lever-lock safe key and displays the first letters of the two company owners, Arthur and Richard Wiedemar (the sons of the company’s founder, Julius Wiedemar) who took over joint management of the company in 1912.

1926 advertisement for Bauche safes with client compartments for hotels, showcasing their patented ‘Monopole’ key.

c.1930 Bauer AG Zurich aluminium safety deposit box, made for a Zurich-based private bank, in Switzerland.

c.1930 Juan Pibernat escutcheon for a high-security steel safe, made in Spain. Perhaps the most prominent maker of high-security safes and locks in Catalonia, Juan Pibernat founded the Pibernat ‘workshops’ brand in approximately 1920 in Barcelona. Pibernat has since retained a respectable reputation in the security, banking and jewellers industries as a manufacturer of high-quality products.

1951 Fichet safe print advertisement, showcasing how high-security safes can be purpose-made to be concealed within fine furniture.

c.1950s safety deposit locker door with 1876/1886 Patent L.L. Bates & Company two-key 6-lever lock, made in Massachusetts, USA. The door is made of 1.2mm-thick hardened steel, with brass hinges and lock components. To help protect restrict access to the contains of the safety deposit box, the door’s lever lock requires two keys to open: first the customer inserts and turns their key, then removes it, allowing the guard or custodian to insert and turn their key, which retracts the bolt.

1955 Mosler Safe Company print advertisement. As this advertisement highlights, Mosler was commissioned to construct many historic secure storage facilities, such as the gold vaults for Fort Knox (which at the last count stored $290.9 billion worth of gold – the biggest concentration of gold bullion in the world) and the original 50-tonne vault storing the US Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights.

c.1960 Diebold small steel safety deposit box door with brass dual-key 7-lever lock, made for a PNC Bank branch in Indiana, USA. Made in USA.

c.1960s LIPS steel 6-lever safe lock and deadbolts, from a small safe, made in the Netherlands.

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1965 Fichet steel safety deposit locker door with dual-key lock, made for Monte Paschi Banque SA in Lille, France. This door has a very sophisticated locking system, designed and built by the Parisian Fichet company. To retract the two locking bolts, there are three steps. First, the correct combination must be entered via the three combination dials. Each dial has 20 possible numbers – meaning that there are 8000 different possible combinations. Secondary, the bank’s vault custodian must use their key to unlock the first pick-resistant lock, which then gives access to the second keyway and partially retracts the locking bolts. Lastly, the customer must then use their key to fully retract the two locking bolts, opening the door. The door itself is made of 10mm-thick hardened steel.

c.1965 Gary Safe Company T-20 burglary-resistant floor safe door with a combination lock, made in the USA. This safe door, designed in simple fashion to large circular bank vault doors, features three locking bolts that secure it into place. It was rated to the T20 burglary-resistant standard, signifying its tamper-resistance for a period of at least 20 minutes.

c.1975 STB Microtechniques SA time delay locking device with two movements, made for a bank’s strongroom door, made in Switzerland. It works by inserting a key into the keyway below the movement, and turning the key counter-clockwise to a specific time that dictates how many hours it will take to be able to unlock the safe or vault, and then repeat the action for the second movement. The purpose of having a second movement is to provide redundancy in case the first movement fails. In older bank doors, it was common to have three or four movements for additional redundancy.