Page:A Dissertation on the Construction of Locks (1815).pdf/23

 thoughts; and the art has received many and great improvements from their labours. Locks have been constructed, and are at present much used, and held in great esteem, from which the picklock is effectually excluded; but the admission of false keys is an imperfection for which no locksmith has ever found a corrective; nor can this imperfection be remedied whilst the protection of the bolt is wholly confided to. For, if a Lock of any given size be furnished with wards in as curious and complete a manner as it can be, those wards being necessarily expressed on what is termed by locksmiths the bit or web of the key, do not admit of a greater number of variations than can be expressed on that bit or web; when therefore as many locks have been completed of the given size as will include all the variations which the surface of the bit will contain, every future Lock must be the counterpart of some former one, and the same key which opens the one will of course unlock the other. It hence follows, that every Lock which shall be fabricated on this given scale, beyond the number at which the capability of variation ends, must be as subject to the key of some other Lock, as to its own; and both become less secure as their counterparts