SOCIETY OF ARTS.
Mr. Hobbs of lock-controversy celebrity, delivered at the Society of Arts, on Thursday, a lecture on locks,—one of the series now in progress on the several departments of the Great Exhibition.
Mr. Hobbs commenced by alluding to the fallacy of the supposition that complication is the excellence of a lock. He then went seriatim, illustrating his explanations by diagrams and models, through the con- struction of the Egyptian leek, the Williams lock, which is a modification of the preceding, Carden's ring and letter locks, and the Bramah ; and gave the method of picking each. On his arriving at the last-mentioned, the Chairman put it to the audience whether, as a matter of policy, this method should be explained : and he was answered in the affirmative by an overwhelming majority. Mr. Hobbs thereupon stated, that his first step had been to take an im- pression of the hole in wax. He had originally supposed that each slide had its spring ; but he found himself mistaken in that surmise. Having contrived the necessary implements, he pressed down the disc, which left - him at liberty to work on the slides ; introduced a lever into the key- hole, and applied pressure to the cylinder; felt the slides successively, pressing them in the false notches, and succeeded in loosening the cylin- der; and the lock was picked. He had never seen the inside of a Bramah lock before his experiments—had never tried to pick one ; and he enter- tains no doubt that, with his present experience, he could repeat the process in an hour's time. Mr. Hobbs alluded also to the "powerful re- flector" he is said to have used, and showed it-to be a threepenny mirror: and he similarly refuted the exaggerations relative to excessive filing of the lock.
The tumbler or Chubb lock, to which he next proceeded, he affirmed to be the simplest and safest : and he commented on the original Newell and the Andrews locks,—all modifications of the Chubb, and of the same amount of security. Yet tumbler-picking is not a difficult opera- tion. The lecturer had picked Newell's lock and, the first improvement of it : but the last—the 501. lock, of which so much has been said— he has tried every means he could conceive of picking, and has failed.
Mr. Hobbs concluded by stating, that he has 'ever made a lock, and has exercised himself but little in picking. It is the principle of con- struction which he studies ; and if he finds a hitch in that, the work is as good as done. Moreover, he asserted that he knows many more expert pickers than himself.
A discussion followed, in the course of which Mr. Hobbs denied with considerable emphasis a report that his own lock (the Newell) has been picked at Messrs. Potter's. He has publicly notified that he deolines any more challenges ; and he repeated his declaration on the production of the new Williams lock, which it has been offired him to operate upon for the stake of 501., and which was produced at the dose of the lecture by the proprietor, with a renewed challenge for 201. But, while declining the challenge, as such, Mr. Hobbs affirms that, in principle, the new lock is no more than the Egyptian lock, and equally pickable ; which the manufacturer denies.
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