People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 January 1897 — ELECTRICITY’S POWER. [ARTICLE]

ELECTRICITY’S POWER.

*/ith Its Aid the Strongest Safe Can Be Opened In Ten Minutes. A few weeks ago I printed in this column a statement made by a Chicago burglar to the effect that electricity could be utilized for opening safes and that the work could be done quickly, quietly and safely. ' This hint evidently set the electrical experts to thinking and the safe manufacturers to experimenting, for it has been practically demonstrated in this city within the last ten days that no safe is “burglar proof’’ providing the burglar can utilize electricity in his work. Several of the best safes in the market, guaranteed to be “burglar-proof, ’’ have been entered by means of the electric carbon within ten minutes, and those who have watched the experiment are a unit in declaring that the applicat ion of electricity to burglary means the practical abolition of h -avy safes. It is declared that the safe of the future will be ssbuilt Just heavy etiough to protect against' fire, and .here its mission will end. Since this matter has attracted so much attention, it may not be amiss to name the man who discovered that it is possible to melt a hole through several inches of solid steel and iron in a few minutes with an prdinary stick of carbon. The credit for this discovery rests with Chicago’s own peculiar criminal puzzle, “Sleepy” Burke. One day in 1893 Burke was going through the Electrical building at the World’s fair and saw an experiment there which immediately interested him. An exhibitor was burning holes through

vanbus 'metaTsTy electricity. "HF ex plained to the intensely interested Mr. Burke that the heat generated by the electricity almost instantly took the “temper” out of the hardest metals—even case hardened steel—gnd that the softened metal could then be melted almost as easily as lead. “Sleepy” thanked him and passed on. That little experiment, however, marked a new era in safemaking and in the development of crime. —Frank S. Pixley in Chicago Times-Herald.