Sargent Lock & Safe Ltd opened its doors March 15, 2010. We specialize in commercial and residential door hardware sales, installation, and repairs. We offer a wide selection of locks, padlocks, safes, keys and other door and lock hardware. Our staff has over 17 years experience in the locksmithing trade and over 30 years experience in the construction industry. Our certified safe technician has extensive experience working on safes/vaults in banks and credit unions as well as your personal home safes. From small to large scale projects we have the hardware and expertise to meet your needs.
Travis Powell
OWNER/LOCKSMITH
Ryan Connors
LOCKSMITH TECHNICIAN
History of Locksmithing
Locksmithing is a profession and an art of designing and producing locks and other protective hardware mechanisms that secures buildings, objects, storage facilities, cabinets, rooms and other places. After a long journey through history, the art of locksmithing went through many changes. For the longest period of time, locksmiths were talented metalworkers who had the knowledge of shaping metal, creating by hand dozens of individual pieces of the locks, forging keys, and doing much of the file-work.
Locksmithing started in ancient Egypt and Babylon approximately 4000 years ago. During that time, locksmiths created wooden devices that used tin tumbler principle to prevent free movement of the door bar. The pins could only be moved with the use of a very large and cumbersome wooden key (created in the shape of a modern toothbrush) that was inserted into the lock and pushed upwards, which moved internal pins and unlocked doors. The oldest of those simple locks currently known was discovered in the ruins of the Assyrian Empire, in the city of Khorsabad near Nineveh. Scientists and historians agree that this lock was created around 704 BC.
After the adoption of metallurgy in 18th century Europe, locksmiths were finally able to create much more durable locks and keys. During that century, many famous locksmiths managed to improve upon designs that remained largely unchanged for ever since the fall of the Roman Empire. With the arrival of more and more successful designs and industrial mass production, locksmithing went through drastic change.
Today, locksmiths work from their shops (often working with all door-related hardware, such as closers, frame repairs, hinges, electric strikes and more), security institutions (designing and creating several layers of locks that protect against theft or intrusion), investigational institutions (forensic locksmiths), security consultants or are focused on one aspect of a skill (locksmith working in a car company, designing only car locks).