In the years prior to 1947, those people predominantly responsible for Diebold building progressively stronger safes and vaults were none other than the very bandits who kept trying to break into them.

Every time the bank burglar changed his methodology, the industry would try to trump the exploit through more burglar-resistive safe construction.

From the 1880s onward, the fascinating war of wits between Diebold and the thieves went like this:

In the mid-1880s, bank vaults were outfitted with light, steel-plated doors about one-quarter to one-half-an-inch thick. Behind the light doors stood the steel bank safe. There were usually key locks on both door and safe. Clever thieves could easily bust through the doors, then pick the locks or take impressions and make duplicates. The answer was the combination lock.

That stopped the burglar for a short time only. They met the problem by kidnapping the cashier or bank associate who knew the combination. Safe manufacturers then turned to the time lock. Opening was usually set for 7 a.m. and closing at 10 p.m. Between those hours the lock wouldn’t open.

So, the burglar turned to black powder explosives, then to high-explosive dynamite to blow the doors open. The industry countered with heavier safes and vault doors that made many explosives ineffective. So the burglars switched to the portable drill. And the manufacturers countered again with chrome steel and high carbon steel and used more exacting tolerances at critical points of construction.

But the battle wasn’t over, yet.

The safecrackers, aptly named, turned to nitroglycerin, soon to become the criminals’ favorite. Hardly a bank in the country had equipment that could withstand it. Then, around the early 1900s, Diebold and other safemakers came out with manganese steel, a metal that proved effective against nitro.

For years, it seemed as though the burglar had been successfully stymied. But then came the development of the cutting torch. From 1923 on, the torch made the manganese safe obsolete. The torch, however, had the habit of burning the currency or melting the coin. The safecracker solved the problem by burning a small hole in the top of the safe and filling it with water as he continued his torch job.

Banks switched to heavy vault doors with linings of cast iron with copper cast into them. Thermatic locking devices were also invented which consisted of a weight suspended on a chain containing fusible links that would melt at 165 degrees Fahrenheit. An attack with a torch would generate enough heat to melt a link and as the weight dropped, it automatically deadlocked every bolt on the door.

Successfully put off from attacking the vault door, thieves turned their attention to the masonry that enclosed the vault walls.

Today, Diebold uses a proprietary mix of concrete and metal particles for its vault construction. It works well.

But there had been many lessons learned along the way in this battle between safe builders and scofflaws. One important lesson was this: It takes some doing to keep a determined thief from eventually breaking through a safe door or a vault wall. But the operable word here is “eventually.”

Bankers and their protectors now believe that the correct approach to safe and vault construction is to build products that delay – not necessarily prevent -- the break-in for as long as reasonably possible. The hope is that law enforcement will arrive before the bandits complete their work. In fact, industry ratings for safe and vault product effectiveness are based, in part, on how long it would take a thief to gain entry.

But that change in philosophy in the late 1940s came about only when bankers decided to lay down a new, different, but complementary means of defense: the sophisticated alarm system. It detects suspicious occurrences and summons responders quickly. We got into that business in a hurry, too.

In 1947, Diebold acquired the alarm business of the O. B. McClintock Company, one the most important acquisitions we had made to date. In the years following that purchase, we have developed a number of sophisticated electronic security solutions including alarms, video surveillance and access control systems, as well as systems capable of monitoring thousands of financial and commercial locations.

Because the bad guys are still out there.   

The trickery of thieves

One of Diebold’s main objectives has always been to keep financial institutions safe from crooks. But crooks are clever. One even used our own product as his means of theft.

When we first entered the night depository business, we felt we had developed a secure way for business people to deposit their daily receipts after working hours.

So what did this enterprising bandit do to turn the tables?

He rented a guard’s uniform, placed an ‘Out of Order’ sign on the night depository, then went on to collect cash directly from dozens of store owners who showed up that evening, thanking each person, one by one.