Today we have sturdy locks for just about anything we could ever want and even our door locks are much better than many people throughout history would have had. However, when it comes to antique locks, there were a few that were made to a stunning degree of intricacy- made for only the wealthiest. These types of locks would have taken many skilled craftspeople to make and they were very hard to open if you didn’t already know how to do it.

The antique metal safe below hails from France and was made around the end of the 18th century or beginning of the 19th century. Judging by how many moving parts there are on this lock system and the extremely unusual keys -yes there are more than one required to open it- it would appear that it was made for someone very wealthy to protect something very precious.

Not only does the would-be opener need to have all the keys, buy they also have to solve the puzzle of which pieces to move in order to access the key holes. If you didn’t know that it was a system of locks, one might mistake the moving parts for large rivets.

See this incredible antique French lock system at work in the video below.

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