Diebold is a company born of one man’s dream to push himself on to new challenges and always to do better than he had done before.

One hundred and fifty years later, we at Diebold remain heirs to that legacy, proud of our historic accomplishments, eager to see what tomorrow holds.

On this landmark celebration of Diebold’s beginnings, it may offer inspiration and a renewed sense of self to revisit our company’s roots, firmly planted in time long past, yet still producing new growth through the key attributes of our founder: knowledge, skill and drive.

Diebold traces its origins to 1859, the same year in which Charles Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities, ground was broken for the Suez Canal and abolitionist John Brown raided the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Va.

But to tell this whole tale takes us back even further, to Oct. 24, 1824, to the small town of Rosenberg in Bavaria, Germany. It was on that date that Bernhardt and Mary Diebold, local folk of high repute, gave birth to Carl. For reasons unrecorded, he later became known in the United States as Charles. In death, however, his headstone was inscribed “Carl Diebold.” He was the eldest of four children.

Carl spent his formative years in the routine schools of southern Germany, then opted to enter a trade. He became a locksmith, a noble craft, particularly respected in a nation that boasted some of the world’s best such craftsmen of the era.

As time passed, Carl became no ordinary locksmith, but rather one who passed his apprenticeship with ease, mastered the business and became an expert workman with a keen eye for detail. Even late in his life, when paralyzed and bed-ridden, he would still call company managers to his home to give them exacting details on matters both large and small.

Yet in 1847, Carl’s youthful dreams of success were unfulfilled. He yearned, instead, for new challenges in a new land across the sea - America.

At the age of 23, he set sail for New Orleans, La., a popular debarkation point of the day, where he spent several months sizing up his new homeland. He then made his way up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, heading for Cincinnati, Ohio, a thriving Western metropolis. Cincinnati was a manufacturing boomtown, one of the largest industrial centers in the country, rivaled only by New York City, N.Y., and Philadelphia, Pa. There were 3,000 factories abuzz in Cincinnati in 1847 – more than 10 produced safes and vaults – in a town of 160,000 people.

Cincinnati was ideally suited for heavy manufacturing, resting as it does on the shores of a great river, useful to facilitate both the influx of building stock as well as the egress of finished product. The city became the world’s center of safe, lock and vault manufacture.

Carl followed his locksmithing trade for a time, then became associated with the firm of C. Baumann and Company (also spelled Bahmann), a builder of safes, where he served as foreman. Carl remained there for 10 years, during which time his appetite for the  industry -- as well as his own part within it -- was amply whetted. Carl wanted his own company.

He began by buying into the Baumann firm in 1859, which later became known as Diebold, Baumann and Company, the earliest records of which site the firm at the southwest corner of Elm and Front streets. As Carl’s name came first, researchers believe he held the larger investment. Partners other than Fred Baumann included E. Heibershausen and Jacob Kienzle.

In 1870, Kienzle bought out Baumann’s company interest. The firm became known as Diebold & Kienzle that same year. Baumann, incidentally, left to become a partner with Gustav Mosler, who also ran a very productive safe company in the same city. Diebold & Kienzle went on to advertise themselves as “manufacturers of fire and burglar-proof safes and patent combination bank locks.”

That description proved bland compared to the reviews of the Diebold & Kienzle products then produced, one observer calling the creations “as good as can be made today.”

A tremendous development and expansion program began with as many as 67 different models of safes being patented by Feb. 1, 1870, with many more to follow.

Diebold safes were characterized by a variety of distinguishing features, some of them new to the industry. By 1870, for instance, Diebold produced very strong,  round-cornered doors and frames, believed less susceptible than squared corners to the yeggmen (safecrackers) of the time.

It was common to find Diebold safes with such features as iron inside doors and key locks, burglar-proof chests, cut-off arbors, anti-dynamite devices and more. Ultra-complicated, burglar-proof safes, such as the “Style A” through “Style E,” were equipped with bronze combination locks, patent steel surfaces, solid, welded angle caps, crane hinges, double worm gear wheel pressure bars with link lever connections – and operated by the Diebold Duplex automatic time lock.

All this activity characterized the Cincinnati period of the company, one of inestimable importance to the firm that solidly forged its future in the industry.

Diebold’s future, however, was not to be written in Cincinnati, but in Canton, Ohio. While no record could be found of the incident, a former Diebold president, Ray Koontz, asserted in 1990 that a huge blaze had significantly damaged Diebold’s Cincinnati plant in 1870. He said the company was under-insured and lacked the capital to rebuild and, consequently, had to relocate. Other reasons for the move have also been cited.

Canton then had a large German-speaking population and the Diebold family had many acquaintances among the citizenry. The city also had available land located along prominent railroad lines, good natural resources and a business community eager to court Diebold’s relocation with easy financing and abundant manpower.

But just then another event of enormous significance to the firm occurred. It was an event which infused Diebold with a huge growth spurt, just as surely as it brought widespread death and near-total destruction to a major American city.