Safes – bank protection – or a related device – Combined
Patent
1983-02-17
1985-02-26
Mancene, Gene
Safes, bank protection, or a related device
Combined
292144, 292DIG65, E05G 104
Patent
active
045012032
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
It sometimes happens during a bank robbery that staff and possibly customers are locked up in the strong-room of the bank. In view of this situation, it is known to provide strong-room doors with an internal emergency handle which allows an opening of the door from the inside. Such emergency handles, however, cause always a weakening of the locking mechanism of the door, so that it no longer meets the standard requirements as to safety. Furthermore, the provision of an internal emergency handle is rather expensive, especially when an already existing strong-room door is concerned. To this must be added that there are many types of strong-room doors which require various types of emergency handles.
In banks, an ordinary safety measure consists in leaving the latch bolts in their protruding positions after the opening of the strong-room in the morning, so that the door cannot be closed again during the day without using a key. This increases the safety against the locking up of persons in the room between the opening and closing time, but the risk is still present precisely at these moments, because the key must then be near the room. Furthermore, one cannot expect this safety measure to be always observed.
The invention has for its object to provide a safety mechanism which to the largest extent prevents the risk of locking up of persons, which is comparatively cheap with regard to manufacture and installation, and which can be used in a standard design in connection with strong-room doors of any type, the mechanism being either built in when the door is manufactured or mounted later on.
Thus, the invention relates to a safety mechanism for preventing the locking up of persons in cabinets, in particular strong-rooms of banks, by means of a latch bolt independent of the normal locking system of the cabinet and serving to prevent an unauthorized closing of the door of the cabinet, said latch bolt being carried by the cabinet door or the associated door frame and being spring-loaded from an inoperative, retracted position towards a protruding position in which, by abutment against the frame or the door, respectively, it prevents a complete closing of the door.
A safety mechanism of this type, for a partly different purpose, though, is known from U.S. Pat. No. 2,783,722. This patent discloses a refrigerating box, an ice-box or the like having a normally closed door operable only from the outside and provided with a firm bottom in which a displaceable plunger or latch bolt is built in, said plunger being spring-loaded to abut against the inner side of the door when closed. When the door is opened, the latch bolt follows outwards to the above-mentioned protruding position and normally it is pressed back against the action of the spring, when the door is completely closed. Above the firm bottom is disposed a movable bottom which is maintained in a raised position by one or more springs which, however, are not strong enough to carry the weight of a person, e.g. a child who has climbed into the box while playing, and this movable bottom is provided at its underside with a lug which, when the bottom is pressed down, engages with a groove in the protruding latch bolt and thereby arrests it against backward movement, so that the door cannot close completely.
A safety mechanism according to this known principle must be regarded as quite inadequate, when the problem is to prevent the locking up of persons meant as a criminal act, e.g. in the strong-room of a bank. For instance, it will be extremely easy to block the movable bottom in its inoperative, raised position, and the latch bolt may also easily be arrested in its retracted position, which will be sufficient to make the protection quite illusory.
The safety mechanism according to the invention differs from the known device by the provision of an auxiliary latch bolt associated with the above-mentioned latch bolt, which auxiliary latch bolt is also spring-loaded from an inoperative, retracted position towards a protruding position in which it arrests the first-menti
REFERENCES:
patent: 2765648 (1956-10-01), Hatcher
patent: 2783722 (1957-03-01), Fletcher
patent: 2851970 (1958-09-01), Ferdon
patent: 3068811 (1962-12-01), Jenne et al.
patent: 3256841 (1966-06-01), Klingaman
patent: 3563586 (1971-02-01), Creamer et al.
patent: 4053939 (1977-10-01), Nakauchi et al.
A/S Sparevirke
Mancene Gene
Schulze Kris R.
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