On April 22, 1924, U.S. Patent No. 1,490,987 issued to Harry E. Soref on a lock casing:

Soref’s innovation was making the lock body from a plurality of steel laminations secured together with rivets — a construction still widely used 102 years later.

Soref was born in 1887 Bilozirka, Ukraine, and emigrated to the U.S. where he worked as a lock smith. When he was unable to find a taker for his lock design, he co-founded the Master Lock company with two friends — Samuel Stahl and Phillip E. Yolles, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to build his locks. Mr. Soref held more than eighty patents for locks and lock-making machinery.

He died in 1957 in Phoenix, Arizona, aged 70.

On April 21, 1857, U.S. Patent No. 17082 issued to Alexander Douglas on a Bustle:

While necessity may be the mother of invention, the ‘082 patent is proof that necessity is not always, the mother of invention.

The earliest U.S. patent reference to a bustle was U.S. Patent No. 4897, issued December 17, 1846, predating Douglas’ invention by nearly 11 years. Douglas’ patent was the start of a frenzy as inventors hustled to the Patent Office invention with their bustles, and 15 more bustle patents issued in the next two years: U.S. Patent Nos. 17,602, 20,263, 20,681, 20,801, 20,865, 21479, 21,806, 22,124, 22,133, 22,197, 22,242, 22,426, 22,532, 22,875 and 23,681. While inventors’ interest in bustles died down before the end of the 19th century, it has never completely gone away, with U.S. Patent No. 12582183 issuing on March 24, 2026, on a Bustle Device to Be Received Under Garments.