Evening star., 1925-09-06
Pass-Key Will Fit
$4,000 New Locks

keys? It's officials, like the architects
and building contractors, are not spe-
cialists of locks; and they shrink from
a combination so technical and COM
plicated. There must be no forgetting
or overlooking.
and key manufactures who executes
the order make, its combinations
There are very great firms, like Fichet,
Fontaine. etc. capable of suggesting
and drawing up, any, plan as well as
of filling it. 81,
I'VE may have to do it yet" said
one of Fontaine's chief foremen when
! asked him about it. but it is not
our work We have responsibility
enough to make the locks and keys"
The Fontaine house, which makes
remarkable key, contemplates TO-
0O0,O changes. Thus it has been
able to plot out in advance eXtraor-
dinary series of locks up to 10000,
10000, $4,000 and even more, all diff
ferent, each unique in the world"
and reserve" them, on demand, for
few great concerns like the Bank
of France, the Credit Lyonnais, the
vast and numerous buildings of the
Sorbonne, the National Printing Office
and the department store of the
Galleries Lafayette and its storehouses,
workshops and dependencies.
OF course, such reserved" series is
never likely to be attained, but nobody
else gets these locks. There are
others. Also the average demand is
moderate.
GREAT hotels and factories are
- adopting. the system. The Hotel
Terminus st. LaZare, has 500 locks
actually in use. The Crillon has $50;
the Palais d'Orsay. 400; the Ritz, 500;
the Lutetia. 400. etc.
1t Is a pump key, solid, with
out hole to fill up and clog with
dirt; and the mathematical combina-
tions on which it must be established
permit that no lock is ever reproduc-
ed a second time. Each key is unique,
except for the paSS-keys of each
system, made on order, and known
only to those concerned.
In hotel the value of such a sys-
tenn is less, because room keys, of
necessity, get into all kinds of hands
A clever technician in the hotel
sneak line can always take a room
and copy it's key while living in it.
BY returning to the hotel and taking
different rooms, such a professional
rat could finally possess himself of
perfectly good keys to, LET us say, all
the rooms of a particular hotel COR
ridor.
He would have to be a very exper-
workman to copy a Fontaine. or,
Fichet key. No locksmith of Paris
would undertake it. by common pru-
dence--he would refer you to the
manufacturing firm for such work.
Hotels, nevertheless, find advantage
in the system. High class rats"
have been pretty we'll wiped out;
and they are the only danger.
Each hotel room lock being abso-
lutely non-pickable and different from
all others, while all of the same type
and size, the responsible chambermaid
is given, at once. responsibility toward
proprietor and guests and a guaran-
tee for herself.
Suppose she have five rooms to care
for. (She is, of course, aided by Wallets
and underchambermaids She can
enter all five rooms with her pass-key
these five rooms and no others.
Pass-keys are established, in such
hotels, to the assignment of five or
more rooms to one responsible cham
bermaid
So the chambermaid's responsibility
is at once fixed and limited-fiXed, be-
cause no one else has this or that
room key but the guest and herself,
but limited to the particular five
rooms or more which her pass-key
enters. No other rooms concern her!