Richard Feynman
- Nuclear Physicist (and safe cracker)
Buy a safe
for your gold and silver, be smart
Larry LaBorde
December 25, 2002
 If
you have been reading my previous articles you know that my father
was the part owner of a local bank many years ago. Whenever I
would accompany him to the bank as a young boy, I was always
fascinated by that big vault door. I would just stand next to
the open door and study the lock workings through the glass panel
on the back of the door. Years later I purchased the old cash
safe out of that same vault and now have it on display in my
office as an antique.
One decision
a gold and silver investor has to make is where to keep the darn
stuff. There are several options for investing in gold and silver.
You can put it in a bank safe deposit box, you can leave it on
deposit with your broker, you can bring it home and lock it up
in your own safe, you can hide it, you can invest in a fund that
sells shares of gold stored in a bonded vault, you can buy mining
shares, you can buy futures, etc. The list is almost endless.
I believe that maybe the best thing is to do them all. If you
are investing for security however, there is nothing like a little
gold and silver at home in a safe where you can always get to
it regardless of what happens. I am not talking about large portions
of metals stored at home but just think of what you have stored
in your garage in rolling stock. Most people do not think twice
about leaving their $40,000 car outside in the driveway. You
simply take reasonable precautions with a reasonable amount.
Beyond that you move onto other investing venues.
In the past
they made safes massive because they locked up "real money." Take an afternoon
and visit your local used safe dealer in your town. Stay away
from the new safes at retail outlets. You can buy a "bank"
quality used safe very reasonably now. Look at safes that have
been removed from the local bank that closed a few years ago.
There are plenty of them and they are cheap. For under $1,000
you can get quite a deal if you do not mind a scratch or two.
Remember that you are interested in security and not a nice exterior
finish. If you decide to invest in a safe at home be careful
how you set your combination. Don't be ridiculous you say - who
would be so foolish as to not set a proper combination you say
- read on.
I recently
read a couple of books about Richard Feynman the Nobel Prize
winning physicist who helped to develop the atomic bomb during
World War II at Los Alamos. It seems that Mr. Feynman was quite
a hands on kind of guy who liked to tinker with different things
for amusement. (He said there wasn't much else for amusement
those days in Los Alamos after work.) When they started work
they all had locking file cabinets in their offices for their
secret papers. The first cabinets had small 3 tumbler locks that
he learned to pick rather easily. After a short while new safe
cabinets were ordered that had 3 disk Mosler combination locks
on them. Feynman who loved puzzles took his lock apart one night
in his office and saw how it worked.
He figured
out that there were 1,000,000 different possible combinations
with 3 disks @ 100 numbers each (100 to the 3rd power). He tinkered
for a while and found out that 2 numbers either way would still
work. This reduced the number of combinations to 8,000 possibilities
(20 to the 3rd power). Through experimentation he found out that
if a file cabinet was unlocked, you could turn the dial carefully
while applying pressure to the throw and pick up the last two
numbers of the combination. This only left the first number of
the combination or twenty different possibilities to open the
cabinet! Feynman carefully recorded the last two numbers of everyone's
"secure" file cabinet while he was in their office
during his work. People just thought that casually spinning the
dial on their open safe was a nervous habit of his. Pretty soon
word got out that he could "crack open" the secure
file cabinets. Whenever a document was needed and someone was
on leave they would ask him to open the safe. He would gather
a few tools, check his list of numbers and then lock himself
in the office, open the safe in a couple of minutes and read
a book for another 1/2 hour before opening the office and declaring
the safe opened.
Feynman tried
to learn how to really open safes and read several books on the
subject. They all usually digressed to hints on human nature
such as birthdays, dates, written numbers on the bottom or top
of the secretary's phone list or the top edge of her desk drawer,
etc. In one instance he was trying to gain entry into the secret
documents library on a Saturday only to find out it was closed.
One of his friends was in charge of de classifying documents
and had copies of all the documents in nine secure file cabinets
in his office. Feynman did not have a clue what the last two
numbers for any of those safes were so he fell back to the old
human nature tricks. The secretary had a list of Greek characters
carefully printed out under the glass on her desk. Next to pi
was the number 3.14159. Why did the secretary need to have pi
out to the 5th decimal place on her list? Sure enough that was
not only the combination to the first cabinet, but all nine were
the same. His friend almost lost it when he found Feynman's cryptic
notes in his cabinets saying, "he should be more careful
with his country's most valuable secrets."
My favorite
safecracking adventure of the world famous physicist was an occasion
when after the war they were selling some surplus equipment at
Los Alamos. One Captain had ordered an expensive safe for his
office because he was anticipating much larger secrets than the
others. The Captain had moved on but his safe had to be opened
before it could be sold to make sure there was nothing left inside.
Feynman had heard that the new locksmith had been called up to
drill the safe. He naturally didn't want to miss this so he went
to the Captain's old office only to find out that the new locksmith
had already cracked open the safe. Feynman was obsessed with
meeting this new genius in the maintenance department and sets
about trying to meet him.
After weeks
of casually walking by his shop and waving and then talking and
finally having lunch together in the shop, Feynman finally revealed
his secret of picking off the last two combination numbers from
an open safe. The locksmith had never heard of it and was very
impressed. Finally Feynman asked him how he opened the Captain's
safe and the old locksmith confessed. He told him that his supervisor
had ordered him to drill the safe. He didn't have a clue how
to drill a safe but it was a good job so he loaded a drill and
some bits in a bag and headed off in that direction. He figured
he would put on a good show and drill into the door and then
come up with some kind of excuse why it wouldn't open later.
The old locksmith
had worked in a safe manufacturing facility years before and
remembered that they set all the new safes with one of two combinations
at the factory. They were supposed to be reset by the final owner
upon installation of the safe. In desperation he tried both of
the factory settings and the safe opened! He simply reported
that the job was done and went back to his shop relieved that
he wouldn't be fired. Then the old locksmith lowered his voice
and told his new friend, "If you want to meet a real safecracker,
find Richard Feynman." Feynman then introduced himself to
the old locksmith and they both had a good laugh. Over the remaining
weeks of that last summer Feynman tried as many safes as he could
with the two factory settings and found that 20% of the safes
that held the most secure secrets of the atomic bomb still had
the original "factory" combinations!
Buy a safe,
be smart, and set your combination as random numbers.
From the book,
"Surely
You're Joking Mr. Feynman" as told to Ralph Leighton.
###
Larry LaBorde
 Silver Trading Company
318-470-7291
website: www.silvertrading.net
email: llabord@aol.com
Larry lives in Shreveport, LA with his wife Puddy, and sells
precious metals at the Silver Trading Company.
Larry can be contacted at llabord@aol.com. You can view his web
site at www.silvertrading.net.
Send questions, comments or corrections to llabord@silvertrading.net.
"Please note that I am by no means a financial advisor and
all investments should only be made after performing your own
due diligence." -Larry
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