Note 11 — Chapter I · Dawnings of Steam Power—The Marquis of Worcester.

The writer of the elaborate article “Lock,” in the supplement to the ‘Penny Cyclopædia’ (ii. 217), in describing the combination lock, says: “The Marquis of Worcester, in whose ‘Century of Inventions’ several different kinds of lock, which lay claim to the most marvellous properties, are enumerated, would appear, from his 72nd article, to have devised an improvement on this apparatus; as he refers to ‘an escutcheon to be placed before any of these locks,’ one of the properties of which he describes as being that ‘the owner, though a woman, may, with her delicate hand, vary the ways of coming to open the lock ten millions of times beyond the knowledge of the smith that made it, or of me who invented it.’ The details of this invention are not given; but in the third volume of the ‘Transactions of the Society of Arts,’ pp. 160–5, is an escutcheon of similar character, invented by Mr. Marshall, and rewarded by the Society in 1784. The details of this ingenious contrivance are fully given in the volume referred to.”