^Lot 910 Holmes Electric Protective Company.

1930-50's. Specimen. 100 shs, common stock, red. Allegorical man with shield and sword protecting 2 women. Edwin Holmes is largely credited for inventing the burglar alarm. Holmes sought to promote the concept of electrical security. Holmes developed what must have been the first alarm system demo case, a mini-exhibit he lugged from door-to-door among New York's wealthiest citizens in the 1860's. Holmes built an alarmed jewelry safe which, via a direct-wire hookup to the police department, could silently report attempts at tampering. He staged well-publicized events and offered prize money to anyone who could break into the safe without being detected. By 1872, Holmes Electric Protective could no longer fill the orders that came in from businesses like Tiffany and Co., Black, Starr and Frost, Arnold Constable and Lord and Taylor. It's a little-known fact that Thomas Watson, chief engineer to telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell, once worked for Edwin Holmes as an alarm installer. Equally surprising is that Holmes became the first president of New York's Bell Telephone Co. ABNC. XF.