How Did Romans Lock Their Doors

The lock is estimated to be 4 000 years old.

How did romans lock their doors.

Presumably the vast majority of locks being used were padlocks as there would have been more versatile in their application. The clumsy egyptian pin tumbler locks were transformed into elegant roman pin tumbler locks of steel fitted with an ingenious roman invention steel springs. The locks were often tiny masterpieces in terms of both precision and design. The simple key and pin principle has persevered over the century.

The romans created new types of door locks and developed the idea of the egyptian lock substituting iron for the wooden lock and often bronze for the key. Roman padlocks in metal were constructed very much after the fashion of the fourth primitive type of lock for doors mentioned earlier. The shackle or hasp which was separate from the body carried on its lower side a pair of spreading springs which entered a hole in the end of the body when the two pieces were being put together. Keys were no longer too big to lose or lift indeed some roman keys were small enough to wear on a finger.

Discover more about the history of locks. You ll notice that the section on padlocks is far more extensive than the section on door locks. Roman locks too were an improvement on the egyptian model. It spread from egypt to greece and eventually to the roman empire where it was further adapted to smaller locks that could secure.