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100
First vault
Actual date 3500 B.C
The need for secure storage stretches far back in time. The earliest known locks were made by the Egyptians. The vaults were also made of stone. These vaults were used to store the bodies of the pharaohs, they were inclosed with valuables and materials that represented them such as gold, crowns jewlery food and other things for the afterlife egyptians believed in. these vaults were usually at the bottom of pyramids. -
200
The break in
Actual date during the ancient Egyptians time period
Theives were able to break in the vault because the materials of the vault were very simple to brake down with the proper tools. this lead people to want to continue createing safe vaults. -
500
The Roman age Vaults
3rd century B.C.
During roman age, advances in molding iron, silver, gold and bronze created much smaller, reliable and durable locks, but they were relatively easy picked or forced open. Majority of the safes made in ancient times and European middle ages were made from wood, sometimes reinforced with iron bands, and locked with metal locks that were not very efficient. -
The wooden vaults
Until 1700s almost all safes were created from wood, richly designed and decorated, with locks that were purposely made to be more complicated and devious (elaborate keys, multiple locks, fake locks holes, hidden locks, and many other techniques for slowing down or tricking lock pickers). Locking mechanisms which were infused into top lid become over time ever more and more heavy, forcing the manufacturers to move them to the now more common door design. -
Prospector to burrgler
After the Gold Rush of 1849, unsuccessful prospectors turned to robbing banks. The prospectors would often break into the bank using a pickax and hammer. The safe was usually small enough that the thief could get it out a window, and take it to a secluded spot to break it open. -
Good old Bessemer
The Bessemer process was the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass-production of steel from molten pig iron prior to the open hearth furnace. The process is named after its inventor, Henry Bessemer, who took out a patent on the process in 1855. -
The first steel vault
By the 1920s, most banks avoided using safes and instead turned to gigantic, heavy vaults with walls and doors several feet thick. These were meant to withstand not only robbers but also angry mobs and natural disasters. Despite the new security measures, these vaults were still vulnerable to yet another new invention, the cutting torch. Burning oxygen and acetylene gas at about 6,000 °F (3,300 °C), the torch could easily cut through steel. -
The cut through
The cutting torch was then discovered by theives. It was in use as early as 1907, but became widespread with World War I. Robbers used cutting torches in over 200 bank robberies in 1924 alone. -
The great improvement
Manufacturers learned to sandwich a copper alloy into vault doors. If heated, the high thermal conductivity of copper dissipates the heat to prevent melting or burning. After this design improvement, bank burglaries fell off and were far less common at the end of the 1920s than at the beginning of the decade -
Continueous improvement
vaults are always upgrading for the better to protect for as many hazards as possible such as fires, floods, burgglars. also they are also constantly adding new locks as well.
