American inventor, born in Salisbury, NY, in 1821. In early life he developed a rare skill in oil-painting, his canvases being remarkable for richness of color and fine imaginative power. Later he turned his attention to mechanics; with a simple wire picked the most famous locks in England, and in 1850 devised a key for bankers’ safes, involving a mechanical principle which, in the noted “Yale lock,” soon marked him as a man of inventive genius. The adoption of his dial and shaft in combination-locks and the perfection of clockwork mechanism and other related devices, have deservedly placed his name high in the list of American inventors. He died in New York City on the 24th of December 1868.
