MODERN RAFFLES BAFFLED

Evening Star, Issue 22359, 8 June 1936, Page 12

MODERN RAFFLES BAFFLED

BURGLAR-PROOF SAFES Not least among the wonders o£f modem invention that went to sea with the liner Queen. Mary was a safe whose locks and steel frame would defy a whole gang of burglars, armed with the most ingenious tools of their craft. It was installed on board for the Midland Bank by the house of John Tann Ltd., strong room engineers to the Bank of England, who can boast proudly that during a history of nearly 150 years no safe of theirs with any claim to be burglar-resisting has been broken open. Apart from guarding against risks of fire and flood, it has been the business of safe-makers ever since the days of the treasure chest to outivit the burglar. They have succeeded so well by so. many devices that probably no informed cracksman in these days would think much, of his chances of breaking through anything like the strong room door /of a bank. Many romantic notions have been woven around the mysterious workings of a strong-room door, but-if a visit to Messrs Tann’s works in the East End of London ’dispelled most of them, it provided an impressive insight to what, after all, claims to be more than a specilised branch of engineering The most deadly weapons of Baffles up to date are the oxy-acetylene blow-pipe, the electric drill, and high explosives; they are all useless against a type of steel perfected by Messrs Tann comparatively recently and given the name of “ Tannsteel." For eight days the British Oxygen Company tested a 6}in slab of this metal with every known device, including the powerful oxygen lance, which is normally beyond the scope of any burglar, and then they certified it to be totally impenetrable. This being the stuff of which many of the world’s great strong ro.om doors are made, there remains the matter of locks. In a corner of the works stand two doors destined for the vaults of a colonial bank. The one is the main entrance, a towering affair weighing 12 tons, with its burnished capstan wheel and fittings; the other, smaller, but built on identical lines to serve as an emergency door. They are made of “ Tannsteel ” about nine inches thick and are watertight and fire

proof. Each has two combination locks capable of 100,000,000 variations, and a key-lock, which means that it will be under the divided control of at least three people. If these three people should fall into the hands of revolutionaries who might seize the budding, any attempts to open the door by the use of the combinations and keys extracted from the bank officials wotdd bo defeated by an “ insurrection device ” brought into action in such an emergency. If a burglar attempted to blow the locks off the door, or he achieved the

impossible by getting through the steel with a blowpipe, then separate me* chanism would come into play to lock the bolts automatically. As though this were not enough, hidden in the main door is a time* lock, controlled by three cronometers, in case one. or two, should fad, through which the normal locks cannot be operated before a certain time set up to 96 hours in advance. Not long ago a huge circular door, 30 tons in weight, was sent out to a foreign bank. It was controlled, by a time-lock with four clocks, two key locks, two combination locks, an “ insurrection lock,” and an electric device to make sure that the time-loci had been set. ,