The Locksmithing History

What is a locksmith? A person who specializes in locks, as the name says it but from where did it initiate? This profession of locksmithing? Was it always as such? There has got to be some starting point; right?Locksmiths were not always locksmiths. In the beginning they were actually blacksmiths and over here the word blacksmith is not to be taken literally. Blacksmiths were individuals involved in the art of crafting steel and metal objects into useful items such as sword and armor etc. Later on they started expanding their work into lock making as well; some of them completely discarded the need to make things out of metal and started specializing in locks only. This practice started developing so drastically that at a point, locksmithing was introduced as a completely separate profession. The need to secure your belongings from wandering hands gained certain popularity and people started rushing to the shops of locksmiths to safeguard their possessions.

However, the disadvantage of this sudden change in the locksmithing market was where few worked to protecting items, others hones their skills at lock picking, making it an illegal act. Now with the increasing crime, there was change required and improvements started taking place to take care of this.Mortise locks were the products to secure your household and possessions from such criminal activities. It is the most basic form of lock that we see in which the there is pocket of the lock installed in the door frame and the lock itself installed in the body of the door. Due to new upgrades in the locks, lock pickers found it difficult to carry out their trade, however, unfortunately it wasn’t muh of a deterrent in their way and they carried on with their ‘fun’.Then later on, during world War II the need for these locks increased but the upwards trend of the profession itself stopped in a way as most of the locksmiths were recruited into the service and the ones left behind to work on the profession and pass on the knowledge to the coming generations. But due to the lack of progress in this period, no new technology in locks was introduced.

Bypassing several years and looking at the present day, we would notice that locksmithing as a profession as come along a long way. Now it is not something that you simply get to know about through apprenticeship but it is even being offered as a degree in several engineering schools around the globe. And then some of the certifications require you to have a certain level of formal education as well showing that locksmithing is something to be considered.It has even gotten the society stirred up to some extent. it happens to be one of those earliest forms of engineering and a heated topic for debate in society as to how safe the knowledge of locks is with the professional of locksmithing and whether he should be permitted to pass it on or share it publicly.