Segal Lock and Hardware Company
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The Segal Lock and Hardware Company of Manhattan, New York, was a leading manufacturer of hardware merchandise and razor blades in the 1920s and 1930s. Established in Connecticut and Manhattan, the firm relocated to Brooklyn, New York, in the mid-1920s.[1] The Segal Safety Razor Corporation was a subsidiary of the Segal Lock and Hardware Company.[2] The business was at first known as the Burglar-Proof Lock Company.[3]
Segal was started by Samuel Segal,[4] formerly a New York City detective in 1912,[3] through his invention of a nearly burglar-proof lock. The vertical deadbolt lock eliminated a horizontal bolt, concentrating on the hinge principle. Segal had noticed that burglars forced locks but never hinges. The firm's beginning was aided by a few more policemen. The original capital was approximately $1,000. Segal and his associates refused $1,000,000 in cash for their fifty separate lock patents.[4] Shortly before her death Mrs. May Stevenson Segal, wife of Samuel Segal, invented a burglar-proof lock, which was marketed to a leading lock manufacturer.[3]