Page:Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks (1853).djvu/221

Rh Since this revision has been in type the great "safes' contest" or wager of battle between the rival safes of Mr. Herring of New York, and Mr. Chatwood of Bolton, for £600 a side, has come off, at the International Exhibition, Paris, Mr. R. Mallet and Mr. Robert F. Fairlie, C.E., being the representatives of the English interests upon the occasion. The result, which, owing to the conduct of some of the parties concerned, assumed an unpleasant and incomplete form, may be found detailed fully in a pamphlet published by Tinsley Brothers, London. It is referred to here because, although no decision of the wager made could be come to, the facts ascertained are of great interest and importance as respects the proper construction of safes. They show conclusively that an effectively constructed door and jambs is really the one thing needful to absolute security, provided the safe itself be built up, as we have urged, into masonry.

They also show that there are good grounds for doubting that the American (Herring's) "safe within safe" construction, with a thick mass of so-called fire-proofing powdery composition between them, is at all as protective against mere violence and the persevering use of wedges, as Chatwood's simpler but far more effective construction, especially of his door and jambs. If one of the latter safes, wholly of steel plating, be fairly embedded into masonry, and another outside flush door of his construction, with curved rabbates and hooking locking bolts, be supplied to the masonry ope itself, it is scarcely an exaggeration to call such a safe "Invincible," so far as anything that burglars, in any civilised place in Europe at least, can effect.