Linus Yale, Jr.

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Linus Yale Jr.
Linus Yale Jr.

Linus Yale, Jr. (4 April 1821 - 25 December 1868) was an American mechanical engineer and manufacturer, best known for his inventions of locks, especially the cylinder lock.

Linus Yale, Jr. was born in Salisbury, New York. Yale's father, Linus Yale, Sr., opened a lock shop in the 1840s in Newport, New York, specializing in bank locks. His son joined him in the business in 1850, and introduced some combination safe locks and key-operated cylinder locks around 1862. Then in 1868, he and Henry Robinson Towne founded the Yale Lock Manufacturing Company in the South End section of Stamford, Connecticut to produce cylinder locks. Yale died later that year.

Yale & Towne Lock Company later became so successful that Stamford was later nicknamed "Lock City."

Yale's cylinder lock, also called a pin-tumbler lock, was based on a principle similar to that of the first key-operated lock invented by the Egyptians around 2000 B.C.

Inventions patented by Linus Yale, Jr. and his estate from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office:

[edit] Patents


He was the inventor of the Yale Magic Bank Lock,Yale Double Treasury Bank Lock,Monitor Bank Lock,Yale Double Dial Bank Lock,and the yale lock.

[edit] Publication

  • R. H. Yale, Yale Genealogy and History of Wales (Beatrice, Neb., 1908)