Jamboree set for Sept. 10-11

Comment by RedShannon: Tuesday, September 7

The Jessamine Jamboree has been and always will be a trashy operation. There are no REAL crafts off...read more...

Fiscal court buys Nicholasville Cafe building

Comment by RedShannon: Tuesday, September 7

That restaurant is NEVER open when you think it will be. Mrs. Deeken is rude to guests, and so is M...read more...

Stanford man arrested on burglary charges

Comment by JohnT: Tuesday, September 7

I am also responding to the online jailer poll. I do not believe my vote was counted either. I vot...read more...

» Read more recent story comments
» Register for your account

In a dark room in the 1940s, Harry C. Miller began fidgeting with a lock that secured classified material in Washington, D.C. He was a master of manipulating locks open, and five minutes later, he was in. He looked up at the security personnel gathered around him watching and said, “We have a problem. If I can do it, then bad guys can do it.”

Miller was a security expert who had started his own company in Washington after traveling around the country installing vaults with his father and brothers, and soon after pointing out weaknesses in the government’s security, he invented a manipulation-resistant lock. Several decades, companies and patents later, Miller’s son, Clay, moved his father’s business to Nicholasville, where the Harry C. Miller lock collection — the largest of its kind in the world — resides in Lockmasters Security Institute (LSI).

The collection consists of 23 museum cases full of thousands of combination locks and time locks that Harry Miller collected and thousands of padlocks and key locks collected by A.J. Hoffman. LSI owner, CEO and president Clay Miller, Harry’s son, said it probably became the largest collection of locks in the world after Hoffman died at an early age and Hoffman’s wife helped move his collection to Nicholasville.

“My dad focused on combination locks and time locks; A.J. focused on key locks and padlocks,” Clay Miller said. “So, when you put the two of them together, it’s a very good place to come and see the history of the industry.”

And the history of the industry is closely tied to the Miller family. After Harry invented his manipulation-resistant lock, he licensed it to security-hardware company Sargent & Greenleaf and then took control of the Rochester, N.Y. company and ran it for 20 years, moving it to Nicholasville in the mid-70s before selling it in 1980. A year later, Clay Miller bought his father’s company, where his niece is currently employed.

His son, Mark, is president of Lockmasters Incorporated, the wholesale tool and equipment branch of the company. His brother, Benson Miller, is chairman of LockNet, another Nicholasville security company, and his nephew Chad is president of LockNet.

Clay Miller said the security business runs uncontrollably in the blood of the family.

“My father, my grandfather, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins, my brother, my kids — it’s like we didn’t have a choice,” he said.

But the Millers didn’t just collect locks and run companies; they invented security devices. About 80 framed patents hang on the wall in LSI next to the lock collection, most credited to Harry, Clay or Benson Miller.

“I’m really proud of that,” Clay Miller said of the patents. “It’s a good family heritage.”

The collection

The Harry C. Miller lock collection contains thousands of locks dating back to the 1300s. Most of the locks Harry Miller collected were combination locks and time locks. The time lock was invented by James Sargent, the founder of Sargent & Greenleaf, who used two eight-day kitchen clocks with a combination lock to prevent entry before a desired time.

“Even if you knew the combination, short of dynamite and nitroglycerin, you weren’t going to get in until 12 hours had elapsed and the clocks allowed the combination lock to work,” Clay Miller said.

Harry Miller did acquire some other lock types, like a key lock used in the White House from 1865 to 1926 and one of two padlocks Linus Yale made in 1840 when he submitted the design for a patent.

Clay Miller said the most impressive thing about the collection was the amount of thought and effort put into the design of each piece.

“Every one of these locks had one or more engineers that sat down with paper and pen or pencil and made detailed drawings of every part that’s in it,” he said. “ ... It’s just millions of engineering man hours that went into all of the things that are here. It truly is incredible.”

The company

When Harry first used the name Lockmasters in 1955, the company offered courses in lock manipulation and safe-lock servicing. LSI carries on that branch of the industry today, teaching “everything from how to pick locks to antiterrorism training,” Miller said. It works with the community college system, and most of its courses are college accredited. Miller said after he bought the education company, he saw a possibility to expand the business as he was referring students to other businesses.

“One day, it struck me that I needed to have a wholesale business; I’m telling people to go everywhere else,” Miller said. “So, I started telling the students, ‘I don’t care what you need, whether it’s an old wringer washing machine or a 747; if you can’t find it, call me, and I’ll get it for you,’ and so they did. They started calling, and if they wanted one of something, I’d get two, and if they wanted two, I’d get three or four, and I got a wholesale business going.”

The wholesale business became part of a three-prong approach with the business that also included education and research. Miller said LSI’s main goal is to help people learn, and all its courses are designed for people coming in with little or no knowledge.

“What I consider our job here to be is to help people understand what security they really have wherever their facility is and understand what they have to do to protect against any perceived threats, whether it be terrorists or just common thieves or whatever the level of threat might be,” Miller said.

Story comments

No comments on this article yet.

Posting comments on this web site requires free registration.

• Create your account
• Log in to your account