Yale, Linus Jr

SUBJECT AREA: Domestic appliances and interiors

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b. 4 April 1821 Salisbury, New York, USA

d. 25 December 1868 New York City, USA

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American locksmith, inventor of the Yale pin-tumbler cylinder lock.

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The son of a locksmith, Linus Yale Jr set out to become a portrait painter but gave this up in the 1840s to embark on the same profession as his father. He opened a shop of his own at Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts; his first products were keyoperated bank locks. The Great Exhibition of 1851 in London convinced him that any lock could be picked by someone with the necessary skill; he then turned his attention to the design of combination locks, designing the first doubledial bank lock in 1863. In 1868 he formed a partnership with John Henry Towne and his son Henry Robinson Towne to form the Yale Lock Manufacturing Company in Stamford, Connecticut, to make a patented key lock which incorporated a series of pin tumblers inside a cylinder. The principle of the pin-tumbler mechanism could be traced back to ancient Egypt; in Yale's cylinder lock, the serrations of the correct key raised the pin tumblers to the height at which the cylinder could turn, withdrawing the bolt. These cylinder locks made possible the use of smaller keys and became the foundation of the modern lock industry. Yale died soon after forming his partnership with the Townes.

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Further Reading

J.J.Fucini and S.Fucini, 1985, Entrepreneurs, Boston: C.K.Hall \& Co.

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