James Sargent (1824–1910) was an American
locksmith and businessman. He founded the
Sargent & Greenleaf company.
Biography
Sargent was born in
Chester, Vermont
Chester is a town in Windsor County, Vermont, United States. The population was 3,005 at the 2020 census.
History
The town was originally chartered by New Hampshire Governor Benning Wentworth as Flamstead in 1754. The terms of the charter were n ...
on December 1, 1824.
He married Angelina Foster in 1847; they had one daughter.
In 1865, Sargent established the
Sargent & Greenleaf company.
Later in life, he founded the Sargent Automated Railway Signal Company, one of several predecessors of the
General Railway Signal
General Railway Signal Company (GRS) was an American manufacturing company located in the Rochester, New York area. GRS was focused on railway signaling equipment, systems and services. The company was established in 1904 and became part of Alstom# ...
company.
He died at his home in
Rochester, New York
Rochester () is a City (New York), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, the county seat, seat of Monroe County, New York, Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, New York, Buffalo, ...
on January 12, 1910, and was buried at
Mount Hope Cemetery.
[
]
Notable innovations
* In 1857 Sargent had designed the "Sargent's Magnetic Bank Lock", said to be the first successful key changeable combination lock.
* In 1880 Sargent connected one of his combination locks to a delay timer, creating the first time-delay combination locks A time-delay combination lock is most commonly a digital, electronic combination lock equipped with a delay timer that delays the unlocking of the lock by a user-definable delay period, usually less than one hour. Unlike the time lock, which unloc ...
.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sargent, James
1824 births
1910 deaths
Burials at Mount Hope Cemetery (Rochester)
Businesspeople from Rochester, New York
Locksmiths
People from Chester, Vermont
19th-century American businesspeople