The old days

[grit1]

I've often wondered, upon looking at a system of locks and keys such as the Best SFIC system here at the University of Minnesota, how locksmiths would pin and cut a system this large before the advent of computers...

Now-a-days you can just fire up a master keying software application that automatically calculates master keys, cross-keying, randomizes change keys to minimize keys that work in more than one lock and shouldn't...for those of you that were around back in the day, was it just a major math-intensive pain to develop, pin a cut a system?

The University of Minnesota has over 250 buildings, each having anywhere from 100-1000 locks I would surmise, almost all of them Best SFIC. Albeit there are different keyways but still, you must come close to using a large percentage of possible combinations considering all of the levels of master-keying...

Just a discussion topic to make you realize how much work goes into a system like this... ~Grit.

[Shrub]

Which came first? the computor or the masterkey system?

What ever did we do before computors?

I dont know! what are we going to do with the younger gereration?

How old is the abacus? did we used to have 40 fingers and toes so we can count higher than 20?



I dont think the was much call for masterkeying as we all used to leave the doors open

[illusion]

How old is the abacus? did we used to have 40 fingers and toes so we can count higher than 20?

phew.... I thought I was the only one to have 40 fingers and toes

I dont think the was much call for masterkeying as we all used to leave the doors open

don't they still do this in canada?

[grit1]

I dont think the was much call for masterkeying as we all used to leave the doors open

[Shrub]

Seriously though if we was to go back to the times when computors werent used for such things (and that includes working out any formulae for non computor use) i just dont think it was called for in such complex uses.

Im sure there must have been such things but a good locksmith would probably just written down the cuts in order to achieve what he wanted.

I would imagine it was with the event of pc's that masterkeying got the numourus methods for doing it expanded up on, before that they would have just been simple systems if any at all.

I do remeber like it was yesterday how we used to go out just pulling the door behind us and even on a summers day leaving it ajar to let the air drift through, ah those were the days.

[illusion]

if you left your doors ajar round where I live you'd get the "friendly" neighbourhood "stealing squad" round to "borrow" your possesions...

[Shrub]

But there wasnt anything like that when i was a kid, you wanst even a glint in your daddys eye then

[illusion]

fair enough... things aint what they used to be then i guess

[Shrub]

I can remember when those vandles left those stones laying around that field in hastings

Still there to this day i beleive

Your right nowadays we even have to padlock the gates up on trick or treat night, nasty american custom

I sat there for hours with my live electric cable and hosepipe but not one of them asked me for a trick

[wraith]

Um, with a pencil and paper?

I re-keyed a church - 40 locks total - I drew a map of the church, marking where al of the locks needed to be, asked the pastor where people needed to get into, and made a list. I called my distributor, told him what I needed, and picked 'em up a day later. Took me a day to install all of the locks... I also have the codes for each of the keys in an encrypted file on my laptop, and on a disk, which I gave to the pastor - so if he needs another key, he just has to call me and I can run one by. No computer needed.

Trey

[digital_blue]

What's he read the disk with then?

db

[Chrispy]

I sat there for hours with my live electric cable and hosepipe but not one of them asked me for a trick

I also have the codes for each of the keys in an encrypted file on my laptop

...and on a disk

No computer needed

What's he read the disk with then?

ROFL

[skold]

lol, no computer needed...i'm gonna be laughing for the next 12 minutes.

[wraith]

Oops, I went back and had to laugh at myself

Let me re-phrase that last part.

I didn't need a computer to re-key the church, I didn't need a computer to keep a copy of the church key codes, I could've written it down in a file - but I choose to keep it on my laptop...

So, yea, computer needed to read the file

Trey