Okay, so maybe the history of locks isn't your usual HBS Working Knowledge Web site. But think about it. Where would your business be without locks on the door? Not in very good shape, we dare say. So time to bone up on this vital technology.
Schlage Lock has put together an entertaining history of locks. It starts by looking back to the Old Testament to recount that when the old gates of Jerusalem were repaired sometime around 445 B.C., the workers fixing the gates "set up the doors thereof, and the locks thereof, and the bars thereof." At that time locks were made of wood, but still based on the pin-tumbler principle of operation common today.
You'll learn about famous lock collectors (Catherine the Great) and lock "firsts" (the all-metal lock appeared between the years 870 and 900). You'll also develop the potential for interesting cocktail conversations (Charles Courtney, a relative of Jules Verne, was the first person to pick a lock 400 feet underwater).
Is all this lock business overkill? The site reminds us about what security was like before the widespread use of locks. "In India, in the days of the Emperor of Annam, valuables were sealed into large blocks of wood, which were placed on small islands or submerged into surrounding pools of the inner courts of the palace. Here, they were protected by the royal ‘guardian angels,' a number of crocodiles kept on starvation rations so they were always hungry. To venture into the water meant certain death for the intruder. The legitimate approach to the treasure was to drug or kill the crocodiles."
So it is clear that all modern economic enterprise, except possibly crocodile suppliers, owes a debt of gratitude to the lowly lock.