From the Vault: The Invention of the Lock & Key

The lock and key are such a central part of modern life, both technologically and metaphorically, but when and how did this technological advancement take place? In this Invention-themed episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe dive into the ancient history of security technology. (originally published 1/12/2021)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormack. And today
it's Saturday, so we're bringing you an episode from the vault.
This is the Invention of the Lock and Key, which
originally published January twelve. Is there anything to say about
this one, Rob, just that it's a good episode. I
remember this one being a lot of fun talking about

(00:26):
ancient lock and key technology. But in doing so, like
you're breaking down exactly what is a lock, what is
it supposed to do, and what are the like the
basic principles of its functionality. I think I recall something
about early keys looking like a big like bathing device
or backscratcher that a hippopotamus would use in a cartoon. Yep, okay,

(00:49):
welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey what of stuff to Blow your Mind?
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
today we're gonna be doing one of our invention episodes.
We're gonna be talking about locks and keys. I've got

(01:10):
a question at the beginning here, did you Rob ever
play with a like combination lock or any kind of
locks sort of in a fidgety, almost fidget spinner kind
of way when you're a kid, because I definitely did.
I had one that I would just lock and unlock
over and over again. Uh yeah, I remember that. I
feel like any house is going to have a drawer,
and in that drawer, well, hey, you're gonna have a

(01:31):
bunch of keys that you have no idea where they go.
They've completely lost their locks. But then you may well
also have a spare key lock or a spare combination lock,
and those are instantly fascinating because yeah, you're getting too
to turn a little wheels and arrange numbers on them,
or it's the kind of the dial and you're you're

(01:53):
you're going back back and forth on it. You know,
they're they're they're fascinating bits of security technology. They're the
one I played with I remember was a combination lock,
but it had a little uh I think it had
a little catch, like it had a button that was
pleasing because it would make the you know, the bar
release and in the hand. Okay, so I guess we

(02:16):
we should talk about the lock itself. And when we
talk about anything in our Invention episodes, we like to
start by talking about what came before. Yeah, so this
is this is interesting to think about and and to
read about. One of the first places I turned to
was the book The seventy Grade Inventions of the Ancient
World will stand by. Yeah, I keep coming back to
because it's just a great book. Brian and Fagan just

(02:39):
a name that's that's difficult to avoid if you're looking
into ancient technology technology the ancient world. And he wrote
a lot right up in this book on ancient security technology.
And he wrote it with William H. Manning, whose expertise
I believe is primarily in in Roman innovations in Roman gadgets. Um.

(03:00):
But you know that they point out that passive security
technology in the ancient world first took the form of
city walls. But city walls address outside threats, not threats
within the city itself. So it becomes essential to raise
still other walls, other gates, and so some of the
earliest bits of security technology in this fashion would have been,
of course high walls, more of them guards, human guards

(03:24):
if you could afford them, or of course be them
the meat tech for security. But then one of the
big developments here the barred door, the mighty wooden bar,
the greatest invention of all time, This inanimate carbon rod.
Pretty much that's the same principle. Um. Yeah, So we'll

(03:45):
get back to the bar in just a bit, because
the wooden bar is fabulous. But it goes without saying.
But before we can have locks and keys or even
the barred door, we need doors themselves. And Fagan and
Manning right that the doors made to turn on if
it's set into the threshold developed long before the true hinge,
and this could be accomplished and was accomplished in cases

(04:08):
entirely with stone. Uh. And it allowed for the door
to be opened and to close. Now, a true hinge
was an Iron Age advancement that allowed the same thing
at a bar slotted into bolt holes on the inside,
and you have a really effective means of locking a
door again from the inside. And this is an approach
that is still used to this day all over the world. Right, So,

(04:32):
I mean that's gonna be extremely effective security. You've got
a bar that crosses from the door to the thresholds,
so the door cannot really be open unless you essentially
have to destroy the house and the door to get in. U.
But but I see a major flaw to that, what
if you want to leave the house and have nobody home,
but still have nobody get in there while you're gone,

(04:54):
That's right. Yeah, the bar is great if you're inside,
but then you but you can imagine the wheels turning
early on. Um that to use a technological metaphor, like,
how do how do I make my door be barred
if I am not home? And you could you could
leave somebody inside it, But then you're getting into the
guard situation. Right, I need to spare human to do
this for me? Right? Why you even have a bar?

(05:15):
Then you can just have a guard and leave your
door open. Yeah, so this is gonna lead to the
development of most of the inventions we're gonna end up
talking about in this in this episode. Um. But yeah,
the bar was was highly effective, widespread. We see lots
of examples, for instance in Roman POMPEII. Um, but this
is interesting. They also write that an additional level of
security was afforded in the ancient world via wax technology.

(05:39):
You would seal a storeroom or container which would not
serve as a real physical barrier, but it would serve
as an instant sign that it had been opened. Ah.
This is like in the James Bond movie when he
he's about to leave his hotel room and he plucks
the hair from his head what's it with his tongue
and then spreads it across the gap in his closet doors.
So will know when he comes back if someone has

(06:02):
gone through his closet while he was gone, because the
hair will will have been dislodged. I remember. Um, this
is often used in in thrillers. I believe in factors
into Stephen King's misery as well. Um, she leaves I
think I think that's right. Yeah, she leaves traps all
over the house to see if he's actually getting out
of bed and leaving the room where she's keeping him,

(06:24):
and she discovers that he's left the room, but she
also thinks he's he's made it to rooms that he
actually hasn't ventured too just because of the fallibility of
the safeguards. The hair is not fool proof. Yeah, but
the wax seal, you know, pretty pretty good. I think
you know. Uh. And and also it's something where someone's

(06:46):
going to break into it that you could perhaps observe
them doing it as well. Um, So we apparently see
lots of examples of this in remains from the Near
East and the Eastern Mediterranean. UH. The Tomb of Tuton,
common in the Valley of Kings, was a rare surviving
ample of this sort of of seal, dating back to
the second millennium BC. Uh and the authors add that
the practice carried over to Greek and Roman UH in

(07:09):
the Greek and Roman period, with signat rings used to
mark the wax. And of course this survives survived well
beyond those days as a means of sealing envelopes and
packages and whatnot. Um and Unultimately, I guess products of
all kinds, of all kinds to this day. You know,
when you go into the your grocery store and you
buy some sort of food product, or you buy you

(07:30):
a bottle of thailand all, then what are you encountering
accounting some sort of a seal. Right, that's a good point.
I mean, the signet ring not only shows you that
it is it is closed and has not been opened,
but it shows you who closed it. Right. So maybe
you could imagine a letter being tampered with or a
door being opened, and then somebody else puts, you know,
new wax on it or gives them a new envelope

(07:51):
with new wax, and you know, and then you could
be fooled, except they probably won't have the ring to
stamp the exact design you're looking for. Yeah, so already,
you know, we're getting into ideas of of like ownership
regarding the seal, our ownership regarding the lock, even if
it's not a true lock, a true physical barrier, but

(08:12):
something symbolic. And I guess that still carries on into
a lot of things that are in in our world
that are you know, only there's only some marginal level
of security there, technological or not. But it creates a
line in the sand. You know, are you willing to
cross this line? Yeah, that's a good point. I mean
I would imagine like the door on a mailbox. You know,

(08:33):
somebody else can easily open your mailbox and get the
mail out and mess with it or steal it or whatever,
but there there's sort of the door is a marker.
That's like, if you open the door on somebody else's mailbox,
you are clearly doing something wrong at this point, unless you're,
don't know, putting something in to give to them. Yeah.
I don't know about you, but I get creeped out

(08:53):
of I'm gonna walk through the neighborhood and somebody's mailboxes open,
it has mail in it. I'm I'm I'm like, oh
my goodness, this is not right. I've got a shout it.
Um And at the same time, I'm afraid that they'll
look out the window and see me shutting it and
think that I'm snooping in their mailbox. Right, Yeah, yeah,
I know that exact feeling. Actually. Um So, I was
thinking about locks, and sort of in line with what

(09:16):
we've been talking about already, locks to me seem to
exist on a continuum of an ever shrinking circle of
easy access to spaces. Um So, of course, you know,
you you've got early technologies like walls and structures and containers,
artificial containers, artificial buildings, and these have to have doors

(09:38):
or gaps so that you can put things in and out,
or so that you can come and go from a building.
So obviously, an improvement over just a wall or a
container with a with an easey with a gap in
it is a solid door with a latch like we've
been talking about now. By latch, I'm interpreting this in
the broad sense, meaning everything from the kind of spring
bowl that you would find, you know, op that you

(10:00):
operate with your door knob on the front door of
your house. So this is a spring tension latch that's
got an angled edge on one side, and it allows
the door to slide gently from the open position to
the closed position, but not vice versa. And there are
all kinds of latches, you know, the hook bar that
you see on a screen door that holds it closed.
A latch is just any mechanism for holding a door

(10:22):
closed until you perform some operation to allow it to open.
And in a way, I think it makes sense to
think of a latch as a narrowing of the circle
of who or what can access the space behind a door,
because once a door has a latch, basically any human
can open and close the door because they've got problem
solving skills and dexterous fingers. But the door cannot be

(10:44):
opened by weather or by wild animals. So a gust
of wind isn't going to blow it open because the
latch is holding it closed, or a coyote can't push
through it because it's not gonna be able to figure
out how to work the latch. So the the access
circle to the interior space has shrunk. Okay, I like this,
So yeah, you get it to the point where, okay,
now only humans can open this door because of the latch.

(11:06):
But then with our next step, you you you close
that circle even tider and you say only humans with
the right sort of stick can open this door exactly
because another key invention to keep in mind again, I
use key here, uh because it's so such a part
of our our language, in our way of thinking about things.
But uh, an innovation to keep in mind here is

(11:27):
is not only the latch, but the latch lifter, a
curved rod that could be inserted through a slit in
the door and then manipulated in such a way as
to lift that interior latch, either by practice because this
is your door and you know exactly how to stick
the latch lifter through and lifted, or of course by
trial and error, because you're a crafty thief who possesses

(11:48):
their own latch lifter and knows that if you mess
around with it long enough, you'll manage just fine. And
so we see examples of this in ancient Greece in
ancient China from roughly the same time period. The first
millennium BC. Oh like the latch lifter, the credit card
in the door trick. Basically yeah, yeah, I mean yeah,
and um and and again I guess you could. Yeah.

(12:08):
I like the idea of thinking about this tightening circum circle.
Only people with sticks with the right stick can can
open this door. And if you're messing around with a
door that is not yours, you have to be willing
to cross that line and be that weirdo who is
suspiciously fishing around in somebody's latch lifter slot. All right, well,
what if you want to narrow it even further? So

(12:29):
you want to keep out the weather, You want to
keep out wild animals that you want to keep out
humans who would come around and operate the latch, who
you know, who would you know, reach behind the door
and operated, or or who would just be brazen enough
to operate an outward facing latch. So you want to
keep out some humans too. Obviously, this is where the
lock comes in. It narrows the circle of access even

(12:50):
further to only humans who can operate the lock. And
the main things here would be that either they have
something in their possession that allows them to operate the law,
which is a key, or they have knowledge of an
obscure algorithm like a combination or a mechanical trick to
open the door. Now, presumably only the people who are

(13:11):
supposed to have access to the space will be able
to operate the lock once you have gotten to this level.
But of course, as we know, there there's sort of
a lock picking spirit within the within the mind. That's
always a part of humanity. And I think I would
have to bet that there have been professional or or
at least hoppyist lock pickers as long as there have
been locks. Yes, I believe so. Um, you know, and

(13:35):
before we did this episode, I was thinking a lot
about about hory Leuis Borges and uh, and about labyrinths
and uh, you know the Minotaur of course, and um,
I momentarily looked around to see if he had a
poem where he talked about keys and locks. Uh. And
of course he can't help but bring them up, because
there's such a part of our language. But I didn't
run across or or or remind myself of anything in

(13:57):
which he really dwells on it. Well, doesn't he say?
Several times in the House of Asterion, like he he
forcefully says in the voice of Asterion, the minotaur who's
speaking the speaker in the story says several times that
there are no locks in his house. Yeah, And I
think this is what's really interesting. You can think of
the labyrinth as the is the lock in large, and

(14:20):
the lock and key mechanism is kind of the labyrinth
and small, because think about the ways that you solve
the labyrinth. You have to use Uh, you have to
have special knowledge, or you have to have, you know,
exceptional problem solving abilities, or you have to have good tools.
You know that the thread that you leave through the

(14:40):
labyrinth as you wind your way through, and much the
same can be said for the lock. That's a good comparison. Uh.
You know, I was thinking about all different kinds of
ways that the lock fits into bigger pictures like this,
and and in one way that I started thinking about
it was that the lock is a physical emblem the
historical development of social distrust. And I think this is

(15:04):
probably a problem that arises only once you reach a
point in history where there are large settlements in which
the inhabitants don't all know each other well, Like if
you are part of a small band of people living
a mobile foraging existence. You're hunting and gathering. First of all,
you quite possibly don't have any boxes or buildings to

(15:25):
lock in the first place. But even if you did,
there's gonna be little opportunity for illicit access to spaces
by unknown persons because I don't know. It just seems
like that that there's a situation a more constant total
vigilance of each other and knowing everybody. But once humans
are living a settled existence in one place, gaining wealth

(15:45):
based on agriculture, and forming conglomerations of humans containing persons
of unknown trustworthiness, you can imagine a desire for something
like a locking mechanism just being a natural consequence of
that that increase in social complexity. And this also makes
me think about locks in the context of one particular

(16:06):
hypothesis about the origins of certain types of religion and
by this time referring to what you might call the
Big God's hypothesis. We actually talked about this in our
episodes on the question of whether Santa Claus counts as
a god. I think we recently republished those as we
did episodes. Yeah, we did. We did a two parter
and we we repackaged it as a single massive episode.

(16:26):
It came on December. Well, I'll try to do the
much shorter version of explaining the hypothesis here, So it
goes something like this. UM. A couple of common features
of the major gods that people believe in today. One
is that they are moralizing God's meaning, they care whether
you do right or wrong, and they treat you accordingly,
so bad people get punished, good people get rewarded. And

(16:48):
they are omniscient, or at least to some extent, they
can see what you're doing when you're alone. And it's
natural for people today to assume that all gods throughout
history would have had these same features, but that's just
evidently untrue. Historically, lots of God's have been more limited
in their knowledge, uh, and they have been totally or

(17:08):
mostly unconcerned with the moral behavior of the people who
worship them. You know, if you look at the Roman gods,
there there are a few exceptions here and there where
they take moral stands, but from for the most part,
the Roman gods really don't care if you're a nice
person or not. They only care about whether you're praying
to them and performing rituals for them. Now, I think
it's important to emphasize that this does not mean that

(17:30):
people who believe in gods of this kind were immoral people.
It just means that they got their sense of morality
from places other than the gods. They might get it
from philosophy or common sense, or have you know, folk
tales or stories within their culture that convey a sense
of morality. There's just not this idea that the gods
are interested in your moral behavior and will will you know,

(17:53):
react to you accordingly. Now, to a lot of scholars
of religion, it looks pretty strongly like there was a
major shift across history. So through time there's been this
shift from mostly these a moral religions with God's not
very concerned about moral behavior, to moralizing religions. And the
question is why did this happen? Uh? A popular hypothesis

(18:17):
goes like this, I mainly know of it associated with
a book by the Canadian psychologist Dr Erain norn Zion
Uh and it's a book called Big Gods, How Religion
Transformed Cooperation and Conflict. And so the hypothesis is that
these big gods, these powerful, omniscient, moralizing gods, arose at
certain points in history. UH. To allow increasing social complexity

(18:42):
and UH, and the natural surplus of social distrust that
comes along with social complexity. So in the ancient world,
as settlements got bigger with larger populations, you'd be surrounded
by more and more strangers, and there'd be more and
more trade between strangers across longer distances. There was just
more freedom in that context to cheat and steal and

(19:04):
get away with treating each other bad. And this led
to social unease and distrust, which made it difficult to
engage in the kinds of trade and social cooperation that
make big civilizations possible. And so this hypothesis says that
big moralizing gods would fill that gap. They would allow
societies to grow big and get more complex, and they

(19:27):
would make complex civilization possible by ensuring that people were
basically all believe there was an all knowing, supernatural police
force who would punish all wrongdoing even if nobody saw
you do it, and would reward people for honesty and
pro social behavior. Uh. It's an interesting hypothesis. I'm not
sure if I'm convinced by it, but you know, it's

(19:48):
definitely worth considering. And the question is, are are there
any ways to look for confirmation of this. One way
I've seen people trying to test this hypothesis is just
looking at existing societies today and saying, you know, are
there any measurable pro social benefits to believing in moralizing
gods versus not. One of those studies, though, that looked
into this, took a historical survey approach, and we talked

(20:10):
about this one in the Santa God episode. Basically, it
just tried to do a historical so survey and say, hey,
as society has become bigger, with larger populations and more trade,
do these booms in social complexity correspond with historical evidence
for the emergence of big gods? And this one study
that was by white House at All in twenty nineteen
and the journal Nature UH found that the answer was

(20:33):
sort of not perfectly. Basically, what they found is that
there was a chronological historical correlation between big moralizing gods
being the dominant religions and increases in social complexity and
a region as would have been predicted by the hypothesis,
but it was chronologically inverted. So they say, quote, our

(20:55):
statistical analysis showed that beliefs in supernatural punishment tend to
appear on when societies make the transition from simple to complex,
around the time when the overall population exceeds about a
million individuals. Um So there is this chronological historical association.
But it seems like on average, the religious changes tend

(21:16):
to come about after the formation of big complex societies, uh,
not before them to enable them to exist in the
first place, which is still very interesting to me. But
to bring it back to locks, it seems like, if
there is anything to this big God's hypothesis, it seems
like an almost perfect kind of mental or spiritual complement

(21:37):
to the technological innovation of locking mechanisms. Right that there's
there's this this increase in distrust that comes with being
surrounded by strangers and having all this social complexity that's
you know, psychologically threatening to you and you know represented
in your mind as a constant threat and vulnerability, and
the the implementation of these measures to soothe that and

(22:01):
allow you to engage in a complex society and cooperate
and trade and do all that kind of stuff without
being overwhelmed with this this kind of paranoia. The big
Gods could be one part of that, Locks could be another. Yeah,
I know, I think that that makes that makes perfect sense,
you know, and you you do see it reflected and
I don't I don't know how much of it will
go into in this in this this is a look

(22:23):
at it locks and keys, but you see it reflected
in the designs sometimes on locks, and certainly in in
the creation of walls and other security structures. You know,
you imbue them with various um uh elements that have
that that invoke the supernatural in the defense of whatever
is on the other side. Oh yeah, I mean another

(22:45):
way you could think about it is um would like
a curse with like a curse potentially represent another side
of the locking mechanism. Yeah, I think so. I mean
the curse is kind of a natural extension of the
wax seal with the signet ring ring put punched into it.
You know, it's uh, it's it's saying thou shalt not pass.
And here is why you know, this is what will happen,

(23:07):
you know, using whatever tool you can to convince somebody
that crossing this line will have consequences. We actually talked
about this when I think it was a couple of
years ago. We did an episode in October about curses
and one of the interesting things about historical evidence for
curses is that it seems like they were often invoked
not just because like you were mad at somebody, but

(23:28):
you would go pay a priest to issue a curse
specifically to like retrieve a stolen item or to pay
back somebody who had like committed a crime against you.
All right, well, let's let's move on to some of

(23:49):
the first locks here. Um, you know, getting beyond sort
of protolocks and getting into things that are more and
more identifiable as a lock. So latches and latch lifters
were used route antiquity, but additional security measures were obviously necessary.
So wooden tumblers or pegs were placed above the bolt,
and they which dropped into holes when closed, and you

(24:11):
had to lift these tumblers to free the bolt. So
you needed a simple pronged key called a lift key,
which was inserted through a hole in the door. And
so this is where we entered the world of the
tumbler lock. Yes. Uh, so we don't actually know who
invented the first lock and key, there is no record
of that, but the evidence does stretch back at least

(24:32):
towards pretty early in the first millennium BC, and the
earliest known locks and keys attested in the archaeological record
and in descriptions and depictions from the ancient world were
mostly not metal. Interestingly, they were you mentioned would They
were generally these wooden, large sort of club sized keys. Yeah,

(24:54):
again coming from the the the the legacy of using
some sort of special stick to put through a hole
and manipulate what's on the other side. Yeah. So the
archaeological evidence uh dates back thousands of years and it
attests to the use of these wooden keys in Egypt
and Mesopotamia, I think basically all throughout the Eastern Mediterranean region.

(25:16):
Um one of the earliest physical examples I can find.
I think this is still the earliest known physical example. Uh.
This Uh, there's a description of this that comes from
a very old archaeological survey. It's a book by Joseph
I'm not sure how to pronounce this. A Bonnamy or
Bonomi b o n O m I Joseph Bonomi the

(25:36):
Younger who did a lot of illustrations of archaeological surveys
from Egypt and other parts of the ancient Eastern Mediterranean,
and he's writing in a book that includes descriptions of
the Assyrian Palace at Corsabad, which is in present day
northern Iraq, kind of close to the city of Mosul. Now,
this this appeared in a book that that Bonamy wrote

(25:58):
with Paul Emile Bota called Nineveh and its Palaces The
Discoveries of Bota and Lyard, Applied to the Elucidation of
Holy writ published in eighteen fifty two. So this book describes, discusses,
and illustrates factual findings from the excavation of ancient Assyrian sites,
and it's you know, these sites would have been I'm

(26:19):
sure marvelous to see for the first time, full of
these magnificent, frightening statues, winged bulls with human heads, the
Lama su Um. But the book also, in a kind
of funny bit of framing, it tries to relate these
real factual findings historically to the contents of the Bible. Now,
I'm sure that gets weird in some places, but actually

(26:41):
in this one passage it turns into a kind of
interesting literary comparison. Uh So, the part where he's talking
about the Palace of course Abad, they're describing the ruins
of this complex unearthed at this site, and they go
into a section about a particular chamber that they're calling
passage passage chamber X or I guess that would be
the Roman numeral ten passage chamber ten. And they write

(27:03):
the following. The doorway we have now passed seems to
form the entrance to a passage chamber, communicating between two courts,
the clear dimensions, not including the bulls at each end,
being forty six ft long by nearly ten feet wide.
At the end of the chamber, just behind the first
bulls was formerly a strong gate of one leaf, which

(27:25):
was fastened by a huge wooden lock like those still
used in the East, of which the key is as
much as a man can conveniently carry and buy a bar,
which moved into a square hole in the wall. It
is to a key of this description that the prophet
alludes and he's talking about the prophet Isaiah and the
Hebrew Bible. Uh. And the quote from Isaiah is and

(27:48):
the key of the house of David will I lay
upon his shoulder. Uh. So this is interesting because that
that might be one of those phrases where if you're
reading the Bible, that just kind of passes over you
like okay, you know, like he's just saying he's going
to give him the key. But that's actually a literal
description of what keys of the time would have been like.
You might carry it over your shoulder because it's like

(28:08):
a bat, it's like a large object. Um. These keys
would have been wooden boards over a foot in length,
maybe as long as two feet, so something like thirty
five to sixty centimeters, with an arrangement of pegs on
the business end, sort of like the bristles of a brush.
I was trying to think what would be the best
item to compare this too in size and shape, and

(28:30):
I think the closest thing I could imagine was a
long grill brush. You know you ever used one of
those to put off a grill. Yeah, So sort of
imagine a grill brush, but made of wood with a
specific configuration of wooden or metal pegs instead of bristles.
And uh. In principle, these ancient locks, just like you
were saying, would have worked much like the pin and

(28:51):
tumbler locks that are still used today, though the pin
and tumbler locks of today are usually more complex by
the addition of springs, which will get into later. It Uh,
they had the same basic principle, which is that the
movement of a bolt that holds the door in place
is prevented by a number of loose pins that are
lodged in tubes. And the pins uh sit between the

(29:14):
tumbler and some kind of surface base like the wall
or you know, the threshold, and it prevents the bolt
from moving. And the what the key does is you
stick it in and then the pegs line up perfectly
with the tubes, so when you insert it into the keyhole,
the pegs will fit into the tubes and lift the
loose pins out of the way so that the bolt

(29:36):
can slide freely, freely in the door can be opened.
And it seems like these were probably used throughout the
ancient throughout ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and basically all of the
eastern Mediterranean. You know, another thing I like about the
description um of which the key is as much as
a man can conveniently carry, is it reminds me of
when you when you have to ask the gas the
station attendant for the key to the restroom, and sometimes

(29:58):
it's something yeah, yeah, that's great because they don't want
to by walking off with it. Man. That is one
of those memories where I feel like that I have
encountered that in my life, but I've also seen it
in movies, And now I don't know if it was
real or if I've only seen it in movies and
I've never actually it was real. Yeah, it was real.
I I know that. I can't, you know, specifically call

(30:20):
up the story. But let's say I'm I'm nine percent
sure that I've I've actually encountered it in real life
and not just a movie. Yeah, I'm about the same place.
Maybe I'm okay. Um. Alright, So we're dealing with the
age of the tumbler lock. Now. Uh. These were in
use in the Greek and Roman world, as well as
in China before the end of the first millennium BC. Again,

(30:43):
the majority of these were made out of wood, but
more advanced models made with metal uh and um and
metal bolts and keys appear throughout the Roman world very
late in the first millennium BC, and this was probably
a materials issue, as iron was becoming more available and
thus could be used in technologies like this more often. Now,
one funny thing that people might be wondering about is like,

(31:06):
why why the long key? Uh, you know, why why
was it so big? Why wasn't it just like I
don't know, six inches long or whatever. Uh, I'm not
sure that this is a good explanation, but the best
explanation I've come across for that seems to be that
it was a security device. Also that it was long
because if you had to reach like a two foot
stick down into a thing to uh to lift the pegs.

(31:30):
That made it harder for lock pickers too. I don't know,
manipulate it with an illicit or dummy object, because if
it's just like a little six inch cavity, you could
probably like start poking little sticks in there and trying
to figure out how to get through. But if there
is a long key hole, it's going to be harder
for you to get the leverage you need to screw
around with it. Yeah, I think that was that was

(31:51):
that was part of it. I mean also, you know,
you can only miniaturize the parts and something like this
so much the ancient world. And we'll get into some
of the is how that factors into the story locks
in a bed and then also these locks were generally
part of the door which has existed a larger size anyway. Um,
Because this is something to keep in mind, these tumbler locks,

(32:12):
they worked via gravity, so it had to be part
of the door. They couldn't. You couldn't have a smaller
lock that was on something like a like a like
a box, you know, anything. Yeah, anything we could be
picked up and manipulated in physical space because then you
could bypass the gravity. So if you're having trouble picturing

(32:32):
that again, remember it's the pins that prevent the bolt
from movings, the pins that hold it in place. And
they're just these like little rods in tubes that sit
there blocking the movement of the bolt until you lift
them out of the way. So yeah, if you could
just turn it upside down and they just fall into
the tubes above, then you could open it automatically. But luckily,

(32:52):
in the world of invention, the demon COYLEI visited the
Earth and brought it with him the iron spring, uh,
and these are used to push the tumblers into the holes, um,
you know, in the bolt and hold them there. So
then you suddenly had a situation where, yeah, you could
take the lock mechanism and have it function on something
that could be picked up and physically manipulated, like a

(33:13):
chest or indeed, like a pad lock. And on top
of this, these innovations led to a situation where you
could arrange the tumblers in a special pattern. So you
needed this required more than just a common lift key.
You needed a particular lift key that terminated in a
bit that replicated the pattern of the internal tumblers. I
imagine this would be a problem as locks become more common. Right, So,

(33:37):
if you're living in the ancient world and you've got
the only lock in town, because like you're the only
person rich enough to have, you know, to to afford
a locked enclosure, it probably matters less that the person
who made your lock only knows how to make a
lock one way and one key works for all of them. Yeah.
It's kind of like thinking about your your little clicker

(33:58):
for your car that unlocks it. Right. Um, you know
we've all had that moment where we have to sort
of a weird, strange epiphany. We're like, oh, yeah, they're
all different, because otherwise we could unlock everybody's car. You know,
it has to it functions like a key. But I
wonder are they all different enough? Like if you walk
around parking lots long enough just clicking it, are you

(34:18):
eventually gonna unlock somebody else's car, or they like really
really randomized. I don't know. The same could be said
about going around town sticking the same key into to
all the different locks. Right, that's a good question. I
wish we'd look this up before we came in. I
don't know how how unique is the standard dor key? Like,
if you stick your door key in five hundred doors,

(34:39):
are you are you statistically going to be able to
open some of those? Or is that not enough? Would
you have to stick it in fifty doors. I know
we have some some locksmith's out there that listen to
the show. It has to be true. Therefore, I think
we'll hear from some folks maybe answer some of these questions,
and it gives a little inside or inside in the
world of locks and keys. Yeah. Um, Now, in terms

(35:02):
of this development of these these these these special keys, um,
these are really interesting. I was reading about it there
and Fagin and Manning and they write, quote, such slide
keys were pushed into the bolt from below to lift
the tumblers and then slid the bolt and open the lock.
The keyhole has a characteristic inverted L shape. And indeed,

(35:24):
if you look at some of these examples of these. Uh,
these these iron keys, Um, you know they have this
signature L shape. They look different than you know they
obviously they don't look like a modern key, but they
also don't look like the symbolic idea of the key
that we have sort of in our mind, our idea
of an old fashioned key. You know, these look like
alien bottle openers in a way. Yes, bottle openers. That's

(35:47):
what I was thinking. We couldn't quite bring it to mind.
You're right now. According to the authors, the most advanced
form um was the was the Roman. We found in
the Roman world a Roman lock and Moost elaborate that.
And it was in the most elaborate that saw use
in the ancient world. Uh, this would have been a
lever lock. Uh. And this is still in use today.
Quote A single pivoted tumbler held down by a spring.

(36:09):
A series of fixed wards prevented the wrong key from
turning the lock, and the key, which had slots in
its bits to allow it to pass through the wards,
was rotated to lift the tumbler and then slide the bolt. Now,
I realize some of that might be hard to picture. Um,
you know, when we're talking about the the intricacies of
a of a of a lock. Uh. But but but
still we're seeing some some major advancements taking place here, right,

(36:33):
the ward in a lock. This is something else we
saw in different forms in the ancient world. But when
you hear ward with locks, basically think um walls or
obstructions that would allow only a key of a certain
specific shape to fit through. Yeah. Now, lever locks appear
in the late first millennium BC in the Roman world.

(36:55):
But there's another interesting, uh invention I want to talk
about here, and that's the padlock, which was a Chinese
invention of the early first millennium BC. And here's how
Fagan and Manning describe it. Quote. In this the bolt
had flat springs welded or riveted to its tip, behind
which they splayed out to give the appearance of barbs.

(37:15):
When the bolt was pushed through the boat hole in
the lock case, these springs were first compressed, and then
when the bolt was in the case, sprang out to
prevent it being removed. It was released with a key
which slid over the springs and compressed them, thus allowing
the bolt to be withdrawn. Okay, I'm trying to picture that. Yeah,
I had trouble as well, so I was looking around
for an illustration and I found one at a fabulous website.

(37:40):
I visited Rain Boorgs Historical locks website history It's historical
locks dot com, and uh, this is just a wonderful website,
fully sided and backed up by Borg's own experiences and observations,
seemingly just traveling the world looking for locks and key
he's in researching. He's a Swedish collector of keys and locks,

(38:03):
has a PhD in aesthetics, engineering and mythology, and he
basically he basically travels the world looking at locks, and
I just I want to base a whole D and
D character on him already. Um So I'm gonna keep
referring to to Boorgs work here and I recommend everyone
check out his website. But what class would that be
hold on? If your specialist in locks? That sounds like
a rogue or is it yet? No, Well it could

(38:26):
could be, you know, you could take it an editor.
I was thinking more more of the rogue direction you
have having to be just a fanatical um lock and
key enthusiast where he he wants to pick the locks,
not so much too to steal anything, but just to
conquer the lock, to understand the lock, and to perhaps
steal the lock itself and leave whatever gold and jewelry
on the other side untouched. You know that's my development, right,

(38:49):
I'm rogue thief branch you are, Yeah, Yeah, that's where
That's where I've been going, all right. So yeah, great website,
Historical locks dot Com. I'm gonna keep referring back to
to Boorgs work here. Um, but he has an excellent description,
an excellent illustration rather of of how this padlock would
have worked on his page about Chinese padlocks. UM. By
the way, he also points to another predecessor to the

(39:11):
lock and key, and that is the knot. I didn't
really think about this, but he says in early China,
strong knots that required the tooth of a wild animal
to undo them, um were utilized, and so this tooth,
which he also says it was a a c as
i at s or c s i UM. I'm not
sure what the exact if he's referring to a Mandarin were,

(39:33):
they're not, but he says this in some ways was
the first key. Uh. And we see an idea of
this too in the legend of the Gordian knot. You know,
a knot that must that is supposed to be solved
in some way in order to unlock something. You know.
But anyway, back to the Chinese padlock. As Borg explains,
there's not a ton of information at least available in

(39:53):
English on it. But but he he flashes out some
of the history of the Chinese padlock. Uh, someone want
to read from his web sight here quote As I
see it, it appears that mechanical locks began being manufactured
and used somewhat later in China than in Western Europe.
They are based on the locks developed in the second
and third centuries by Roman engineers and spread by the
Roman army to all parts of the Giant Empire. They're

(40:14):
striking similarities between locks in China and Scanda, and in
Scandinavia during the late Viking era. Both of these cultures
were removed from direct influence by the Roman Empire. Many
of the larger iron padlocks I have studied have an
unmistakable character of seventeenth through nineteenth century Arabic locks. However,
it is clear that padlocks with ward springs on the
shackle have been used by emperors and wealthy officials from

(40:38):
the Gin era to sixty five through on. But how
did the first emperors arrive at the idea of using padlocks?
So Borg thinks that foreign lock technology may have entered
into Chinese culture via Chinese trade and Chinese expansion, with
like India and Iran and the Silk Road in general

(40:59):
being here a building then upon existing Chinese security technologies.
Now at first, Board says such locks were probably just
status symbols rather than dependable security devices. But his keys
became more common and locks became more common. Married women
wore keys, designating their role as key bearers looking after

(41:20):
the family's property, something that we apparently also see in
European traditions. According to Borg, so I guess the technos
symbology here is just unavoidable. Oh well, much in the
same way that say, the prophet Isaiah would say, uh
that that God says to David, I will place the
key upon your shoulder, meaning like you are in charge,
you have the authority. Having the key to the household

(41:42):
would be like symbolizing your authority over the household and
the trust placed in you. Yeah, key means access, A
key means um possession. Really, so uh then in the
Ming dynasty sixty four, improved materials and designs brought about
improved padlocks. The wooden pin tumbler lock with two to
three pins was used in China at this time, as

(42:04):
it was in Europe and parts of Africa, but Borg
rights with clear ancient Egyptian roots. Chinese padlocks were often engraved,
sometimes with the name of the current emperor, but Borg
says more often than not it was poetry or wishes
of good fortune, you know, that were that were inscribed
on the lock. Like I said, Borg has great information
on his website, but he also has tons of wonderful photographs,

(42:27):
uh in the illustrations of keys and so some of
these um uh, these these Chinese padlocks are just amazing
to look at. Um. One of the ones has a
so you've got a key here that I'm looking at
that has a design that looks like it could be
a complex like rune or China or like Mandarin character. Yeah.

(42:48):
This is a box shaped padlock with a a side
key that goes into the side. It's just really really ornate,
really beautiful as this kind of you know golden or
u you know, a copper color to it. It's it's
really awesome. And Chinese padlocks took on a number of
of really artistic forms, including the forms of various zodiac animals. Um.

(43:12):
We we also see animal shaped loocks in other parts
of the world, such as Russian and Persia. But but
the Chinese had these wonderful like zodiac animal shaped padlocks.
There's one of a snake that he has a picture of.
This just amazing. Uh with this uh this this long
key that goes into it that looks a little bit
like a like a file or something. Yeah, I see

(43:32):
a horse. Yeah, there's a horse. And then um oh,
and then this is, you know, not a zodiac animal.
But there's a some fabulous crab blocks. You know, I
love a crab block if anybody's wondering what to get
me for my birthday. Now we also see some really
awesome looking Chinese combination locks. Now Bor grides that that
these are quote a nearly thousand year old Arabic convention,

(43:56):
but it took several centuries for the technology to travel
to Europe, and it likely took hold in China around
the thirteenth century. Now, he points out that Italian engineer
Giovanni uh de Fontana was the first European to make
a sketch of the Ara block idea back in fourteen twenty.
And if we look to the writings of Muslim engineer

(44:17):
al Jazari in twelve oh six, uh, he wrote a
book titled the Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices. Uh.
And al Jazari is an interesting figure. Two was a
poly math and an inventor of various automata. So all
sorts of I think there was like some sort of
a mechanical flute player or something that he made. Oh,

(44:37):
that may have come up in a in a previous
episode we did. Uh. I think we did a whole
episode maybe of invention about early automata at some point
and talking about how they played into debates about the
nature of what living things were. Yeah. So the Chinese
padlocks were really interesting because they also have this kind
of um, you know, this horizontal elong It did look

(45:00):
to them. They don't look really much like a modern padlock. Uh.
This is outboard describes them, describes them. Quote. These keyless
locks are opened by turning by the turning of several
rings or cubes. The surfaces of the rings or cubes
have imprinted letters, numbers, or in this case Chinese characters. Commonly,
each ring or cube is marked with four characters. Each

(45:21):
must be turned to the correct position before the lock
can be opened, and he has examples of this on
the website as well. But but all this led to
a whole tradition of Chinese padlock charms. Uh And this
this reminds me a bit of the we we discussed
recently on our episode about beds. We talked about the
Egyptian headrest and the ancient Egyptian headrest that kind of

(45:42):
like you know, holds the neck up during sleep, and
how this ended up taking the form of a of
a charm. You know that that was not a functional headrest,
but but brought with it all the magical ideas that
were associated with it. And likewise you see the emergence
of Chinese padlock charms, flat ornate representations of padlocks that
had no mechanical functionality. Instead, they were protective wards for

(46:05):
individuals or families. And apparently part of the idea here
is that you could lock a newborn child to life
and you would hang this in the house or whatnot,
and then um, you know, older individuals could could actually
wear the lock charm on their person. Wow. So you
can see the obvious symbolic connection there that like the
lock is security, the lock is protections of the charm

(46:26):
is a is a abstracted version of that. Yeah, And
if you want to see some examples of this, there's
a there's a website called primal Trek that trek is
spelled like star trek, primal trek dot com and they
has it's a site about various Chinese charms. It's I
think it's largely like a collector's website, so it's not
an academic site, but it but it has lots of

(46:47):
cool photographs and you can see examples of these lock
charms there. And again they're they're oftentimes beautifully decorated as well,
with various symbols and signs, mandoring characters, et cetera. Now,
the Chinese wedding lock tradition also came out of this,
and it's still practiced today with inscribed padlocks, and of
course we see versions of this practiced around the world
as well. You know, if you go out to a

(47:08):
bridge in your area or certain fences, you may find
a bunch of padlocks that have been placed there. Uh,
and then that's been done with, you know, at least
with some sort of symbolism implied, if not some sort
of actual magic. But you look at examples of the
wedding locks from from China's past and they're they're absolutely

(47:28):
beautiful as well. The photographs that I found on board
side of these. You know, it looks like some sort
of a musical instrument. Oh yeah, I see it. The
shape is it's like the base of a loote. Yeah,
and the lock itself like reminds me more of some
sort of like ultramodern uh purse or something, you know. Uh,
it's it's Yeah, they're really fascinating and again you can

(47:49):
you really need to look up a picture of them
to understand what I'm talking about. But but yeah, it's
beautiful and just another insight into just how the idea
of the lock and the key, how it permeates our
understanding of ourselves and our relationships to the world and
other people. Yeah, it's funny how much, uh, if you
listen to people having I don't know, social cultural values arguments,

(48:11):
it's funny how much the phrase wedlock comes up. That's great.
Wedlock is never a phrase that's used in like normal
life where you're talking about normal relationships, you know, like
you want to get married to somebody, You don't say
I want to be in wedlock with you. It's like
only a phrase that's deployed when framing marriage in some
kind of like sort of contentious political argument. And that

(48:34):
funny I place you under wedlock. I cast wedlock third level.
Thank thank you, thank you. Now. We we mentioned earlier
about just the idea of of like a large lock
that's part of the door, and how one of the
issues here is just how small can you possibly make

(48:55):
the parts right? And uh, and then especially when you're
getting too into locks that are produced than for everyone
in the city, which would be the locksmith's uh, you know,
duty to the to those who live there. Um. There's
an interesting case that that is, uh that is cited
in the book Connections by James Burke. Of course, he

(49:17):
also did the television series Connections about the history of
inventions and how and how they're connected by sometimes these
sort of like trivial seemingly trivial moments in h in
human Life and Human History. Wonderful series. But he has
a bit where he talks about locks and the Industrial Revolution,
and he makes special mention of Henry Modsley, who lives

(49:38):
seventeen seventy one through eighteen thirty one, an English machine
tool inventor who just apparently worked his way up through
factory work from the age of twelve, just doing all
sorts of kind of god awful sounding jobs. But he
had this, um, you know, very ingenious mind for mechanisms,
and you know he's just figuring out how everything works

(49:59):
at every stage the game. And then at age eighteen
he begins to work for the English inventor and locksmith
Joseph Brahma. Oh so major figure. People might well have
heard of the Brahma lock before. Yes, yeah, the Brahma
lock is central to this. Brahma also invented the hydraulic press.
So if we have any Terminator fans out there, you

(50:21):
can think you can thank a Brahma. Otherwise the scene
wouldn't be possible. So Brahma designed and patented an improved
tumbler lock um, but he encounter challenges when it came
to manufacturing it for an economic price, because it's one
thing to make a really cool lock or really effective lock,
a lock that I think I read that he he

(50:41):
even had one of these placed in in the front
of his store, and there was a reward if you
could pick it, you know, But well this comes up
often then, um, you know, in many episodes of invention,
we discovered that often the the impediment to an invention
going out into the world is not that it can't
be made, but that it can't be made economically, that

(51:02):
it can't be made in a way that you know,
makes sense for anybody to make it. Yeah. I remember
we talked about this with with Jeff Barry ak Beach
Barry about cocktails, like even in that like it's one
thing to make a really awesome cocktail with all these
crazy ingredients, but can you scale that? Can you actually
can you make it in a bar and then and
then sell it put a price on it that people
will pay. And of course it's the same thing with

(51:25):
this lock. So um yeah, So so Brahmin he has this,
he has this problem. How can I make this this
lock in a way where people will actually be buying
and I'll make money off of it? Because apparently the
time was right because uh, because Burke mentions that there
were a series of robberies in London, so it increased
had increased the demand for security technology and and Brahma

(51:47):
wanted to take advantage of this, so he ends up
hiring Modesley, and Modesley devised tools to make the locksmiths
work faster and more accurate, enabling the Brahma lock to
be produced for cheaper and sold at an economic price. Now,
Modesley eventually leaves, I was reading the Dibramo like pulled
a Scrooge on him and wouldn't give him a raise

(52:07):
after all of this, So he leaves, but he takes
his lathe with him and he sets up his own shop,
and in time he becomes what some historians consider the
founding father of machine tool technology. And this is actually
historically very important, or at least Burke makes the the
argument that it is, because, of course, it is true
that precise machining of metal parts, which means the ability

(52:31):
to cut a piece of metal into an accurate design
over and over with little error or variants, that that
precise machining was a really important ingredient for the Industrial revolution.
If you're mass mass manufacturing machine parts so that people
can mechanize production of whatever it is, you know, whatever
textiles they're working on, or or whatever um you need

(52:53):
to be able to produce all of these small, accurate
reproductions of these these fine metal parts, and having the
right kind of lath or the ability to machine these
parts correctly is crucial. Absolutely. So yeah, we see the
role of the lock in this, this pivotal moment in
just the future of human technology. Uh so, yeah, fascinating

(53:16):
to think about. Now, for the rest of the podcast, though,
I thought we'd we talk a little bit at least
about the use of locks and um and keys in
you know, superstitious stories, but also in symbolism. Uh certainly
we won't be able to even you know, scratch the
surface of the global traditions here and again, this will
be a great place for our various listeners to reach

(53:38):
out to us and share more. But uh Bora goes
into this a tiny bit on his website, and uh,
I want to read this one example that he shares.
Quote in Swedish folk tales, we have the castle that
stood on golden posts. A cat transformed itself into a
loaf of bread in the keyhole of a giant's castle,
keeping the giant from getting into his home. Unlock the door,

(54:00):
or the giant yelled, but instead the cat told him
about its many adventures until the sun went up and
the giant bursts. That sounds like a highly condensed folk tale,
maybe something that was originally about ten times as long.
I don't know. I kind of love it. It's it's
kind of you know, it almost feels like it's tweet length.

(54:21):
But but but perfect. Listen, we're not screwing around. Okay,
I gotta get to the burning up really fast. I'm
not burning up bursting. Sorry, the sun comes up and
he bursts. Um, wait, hold, why did the cat turn
into a loaf of bread? I guess? Okay, so I'm guessing. Okay,
it's a giant. So it's a huge door and in

(54:42):
a huge keyhole, and I guess the cat climbs in
and then expands into the form. Like if the cat
can change his form, then I guess he becomes bread
in order to completely stop up the keyhole and thus
be impossible to remove. Okay, I see, so the cat
is doing this on purpose. It's not just like the
cat happened to transform into a loaf of bread, right, Yeah,

(55:06):
I'm guessing the cat is kind of like the dog
on Adventure Time. Um, Jake, you know where he can
he can change his shape, Like the cat goes into
the keyhole, swells up and then the giants it really
wants to get inside because the giants like a troll
and we'll burst if the sun touches him. So yeah,
it's a perfect story. Go back to nippel him um.

(55:31):
So from here, I'd like to to move on to
to some of some symbols um that involved the key Uh.
There there's one in particular I wanted to start with
because it was one that I remember seeing when I
was a kid, and I didn't I didn't understand what
it what it was about. Um. So to to lay
a little background here, I I assemble and paint various miniatures.

(55:52):
I do little dungeons, dragons, miniatures. I do a lot
of Star Wars miniatures right now, I do Star Wars vehicles.
But my dad was really into war were two miniatures,
so you know a lot of like um, like US
Air Force planes and tanks, but also some German planes
and tanks as well. And I remember there being um
a book or a pamphlet that came with one of

(56:13):
these that showed all these different German military symbols and
they were really perplexing to look at, especially since a
lot of them seemed to like really resonate with evil.
You know. It's kind of like that Mitchell and Webb
look bit, you know, are we the Batties where they're
looking at all the various skulls and black and white
symbols all over their their Nazi uniforms. And I recall
one unit insignia in particular that had a key on it.

(56:36):
And and I hadn't thought about this in a long
time until we started to put this episode together. So
I looked into it. I'm like, what it was that
key about? And I was thinking, Okay, it's gonna have
some sort of you know, occult symbol. You know. It's
one of these various symbols that the Nazis um you know,
appropriated and you know, stole from some other traditions, the
key to the gate of the thousand year Reich or whatever, yeah,
or or whatever, you know. But I was curious, like

(56:58):
where they got it. Um. So, first of all, this
was the symbol for the first s s Panzer Division
and UM, and yeah, it does look kind of spooky.
It's in black and white, you know. UM. As it
turns out, though, it has a pretty non spooky, non
occult origin. Apparently Joseph Sep Dietrich was the unit's first
commander and his last name Dietrick. Uh. It can be

(57:21):
translated as keeper of secrets or lock pick or skeleton key.
So that's all there is to it. That the guy's
last name like meant lock pick or skeleton key, and
so they use that as the emblem UH. And then
the Armored U S. S. Pans or Corps had at
a different version of the symbol with like cross keys.
But it's interesting because it also kind of sums up

(57:43):
the utter emptiness of the Nazis in a way. You know.
It's just it was picked because it it it had
some tide of this dude's last name, and it looked
kind of spooky, but it means nothing. Right, portentous seeming
images with the appearance of symbolic significance, but in fact
they just went to nothing other than an individual personalities ego. Yeah,

(58:04):
but I mean too, I guess on on some level
though you look at it, it involves the key and
involved the lock and the key in the lock are
found just throughout human iconography, in one form of another
or another. UM one of the big ones are the
the you'll find our St. Peter's keys. You've seen these before, right,
ja oh, absolutely, yeah. So St. Peter Um, according to

(58:26):
Christian tradition, was the was the first pope. You know,
he was of course one of the disciples of Jesus,
and it said that he was the first leader of
the Catholic Church. And so a lot of Catholic imagery
uses the the keys of Peter as imagery, you know,
symbolizing the authority of the church or stuff having to
do with the papacy or Vatican City. Yeah. I believe

(58:48):
that the Matthew sixteen nineteen says, and I will give
unto the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, and whatsoever
thou shalt bind on earth, shall be bound in Heaven,
and whatsover thou shall lose on earth, shall be losed
in heaven. Um. So you see these on a lot
of the you know, flags and seals associated with the papacy,
but we also see them in a lot of Swiss

(59:09):
flags as well, and and other like European bits of heraldry.
You know, as much as I'm kind of a Bible nerd,
I've actually never looked deeply into that passage. I wonder,
I wonder what the historical context of that whole the
key imagery is. I bet that that cashes out in
a kind of surprising and interesting way. I would put
some money on it. Yeah. Um. Now, if you're looking

(59:32):
for more modern uses of it, more recent uses of it,
you can look at the flag of the U. S.
National Security Agency, the n s A, because it has, um,
it's the seal with the you know, the United States Eagle,
and what does it have gripped in its talents but
a big old key. It suggests that the agency is
a bird of prey that swoops down and snatches up

(59:52):
access to things. Yeah, or or has just been granted
the key to the city by the mayor, like it's
a huge key the hopes of Yeah. So that's a
fun one to look up. Um. Another one that I
ran across, uh, And again we're not mentioning near all
of these, but just some of the ones that stood

(01:00:13):
out to me. There's the flag of Gibraltar. Uh. This
is the flag for the British Overseas territory, and it
features a key affixed to a fortress by a golden cord.
So it's a golden key, has his golden cord and
it's kind of like tied inside the fortress's mouth sort of. Um.
And the golden key here is said to represent the
Fortress of Gibraltar's importance and also signify the idea that

(01:00:36):
Gibraltar was long seen as the key to Spain. But
this one's nate because the key's just hanging there. It's
kind of inviting you, like, am I supposed to take it?
Is that for me? Um? There's also a really interesting one.
I ran across the coat of arms of the German
city of Bremen, a rather curious looking key as it's
linked to the patron saint of the Bremen Cathedral, uh

(01:00:58):
Simon petras Ak say Peter um. But but this is
this key has a real maze like look to it.
It's really interesting when you look at the the end
bit here, it's very ornate. So I guess this is
what you would call awarded key, right, like, yeah, And
the way that it works is has a complex, intricate
sort of series of patterns in solid metal and then

(01:01:19):
it would turn through corresponding gaps in the walls inside
the lock, right And yeah, so I imagine this could
be a functional key like there. But but on the
other hand, it also so just you know the places
you can go with the key as symbol, like the
key can then just be transformed into other objects, you know,
where in a way when you wouldn't have to go

(01:01:40):
far to not recognize this as a key anymore. Because
there are also a bunch of lions on this and
one of the lions is brandishing the key, and it
looks more like it's a sword or a small hand cannon. Um,
it's it's curious. Yeah, So I guess, I guess what
we're saying is that sometimes the key means virtually nothing,
but but often it signifies authority or teaching importance. Just

(01:02:01):
a few examples the trust, ownership, UM, secret knowledge, certainly
at times UM forbidden knowledge. Yeah, there's so many directions
you can go in. I wonder is there anybody else
out there who's enough of a fan of the original
Halloween that in your household whenever you lose your keys
and you're looking for him, everybody starts saying the keys

(01:02:25):
like Jamie Lee Curtis does. And and you know the
ending sequence, Oh man, do you remember that? God? I
vaguely remember that, but it does make me think of
just oh man, keys and horror films, the key fumbling scene,
the key to a door, or certainly the key to
an automobile. Where would we be without the key? Where
would our suspense be? You know, I feel like a

(01:02:47):
lot of movies have replicated that scene in Halloween where
you're fumbling with the keys, you're trying to get through
the door, the killer is approaching. You finally get through
the door, and then the killers just where are they?
They're just gone, you know, they were right up on
you when you get through, and then of course they're
somewhere inside. Uh yeah, they'll they'll do it every time. Man.
I I certainly feel like we've only scratched the surface

(01:03:08):
here about uh, certainly about keys and locks in history
and global cultures and also pop culture and yeah, man,
there's so many different directions to go in. So obviously
we would love to hear from everybody out there, you know,
how locks and keys feature into your life, locks and
keys from your part of the world or places that
you've traveled to. Um, you know, it's all, it's all

(01:03:29):
on the table. Would love to love to hear from
you Yeah. In the meantime, if you would like to
check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
past episodes to deal with inventions or whatnot, you can
find us wherever you get your podcasts and wherever that
happens to be. We just asked that you rate, review,
and subscribe if the platform allows you to do that,
if they provide you the keys necessary. Huge thanks as

(01:03:50):
always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
you would like to get in touch with us with
feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
topic for the future, or just to say hi, you
can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production

(01:04:12):
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
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