The Three Tumblers Podcast

Roy Oliver in front of Medeco headquarters, 1977.

In the late 1960s, Medeco essentially started the American high-security lock industry with a revolutionary design incorporating angular key cuts and pins paired with a sidebar. Nearly 60 years later, Medeco’s reputation as a premiere high-security lock manufacturer remains and their products continue to be used throughout state and federal government facilities, hospitals, schools and universities, and commercial properties. But where did the Medeco name come from?

Roy C. Spain, an employee at the Yale Lock and Hardware plant in Salem, Virginia, partnered with Paul A. Powell to form a tool and die company known as the Mechanical Development Company in 1950. Elvis C. Flora and Roy N. Oliver joined the Mechanical Development Company shortly thereafter and, upon learning that Spain had created a prototype of a key that used angular cuts, Flora and Oliver urged Spain to fully develop his lock concept. Spain would eventually leave Yale and devote himself full time to the company and his idea. The group then began producing keys and cylinders for what we now call the “Medeco Original” platform. After initially shopping the Original platform around to other lock manufacturers, the group decided to begin selling it themselves under a new business with a new name: Medeco, taking the first two letters from the original companies’ name.