††Some of the earliest locks were produced by the ancient Egyptians. They were made of wood, often decorated with gold, and were used to secure royal treasures. The first metal locks on record were made around the year 550 BC by Theodorus Samos, a Greek. Locks operated with keys were invented in Sparta, Greece in 400 BC. The next big advance was made in 1778, when an English locksmith, Robert Barron, invented a type of lock that resists picking. It was the fore-runner of the present-day mortise lock, which contains levers that the key must raise to an exact height before the bolt can be moved.
