History Continued

     A Short History of Locks by Biddy Walcot provides a much better description of the beginnings of locks and lock picking. The text is longer yet easy to read, and the paragraphs provide important facts without boring you with a lecture. More images and text features would have been appreciated, but do not seem necessary in this article.

     The list starts off with the ancient Egyptians, just like the other article. However, Walcot actually talks about the ancient Greeks, a very important society in history as far as technological advancements are concerned. Even more so for the ancient Romans, who improved the locks with better materials and warding. However, after that, no  new locks were created for nearly 1,700 years. People attempted to improve on and add to the design, by creating more complicated keys, obscuring the lock, and even creating fake locks as scapegoats; but in 1778 Robert Barron patented the double acting tumbler lock, which was later improved upon by Jeremiah Chubb in 1818. Later that century, in 1848, Linus Yale improved upon the old Egyptian design and created the Yale lock, one of today's more commonly use domestic locks. Combination locks, which had already been existed, were modernized in the1870's. The main advantage of the combination lock is that there is no keyhole to be picked. Potential burglars had to find a different way to get into safes.

     Walcot's article is very dense with facts and can easily confuse you. Previous knowledge is certainly required to get an adequate amount of information from this, but what you do find out from it is incredibly useful and interesting. Overall, superior to Ask.com's article in terms of details and structure, but not exactly good for an introduction.