Founding of VingCard The original VingCard lock was invented by
Tor Sørnes, a Norwegian author, politician, and engineer. The 32 holes in the key gave 4.3 billion combinations, the same number as the population of the
earth at that time. The key could easily be changed for each new guest by inserting a new key template in the lock that matched the new key. In 1979 Sørnes was working for TrioVing as an engineer in the R&D Department when a sister company of TrioVing was established – VingCard. This became the start of the company VingCard. Export of the original invention was initiated in 1978 when it was installed in the
Peachtree Plaza Hotel in
Atlanta, Georgia which was the world's tallest hotel at the time. The hotel had been troubled by burglaries and was eager to test the new security innovations. This original system was patented in 29 countries, and was a mechanical key card predecessor to the contemporary electronic room access card. The invention is still in worldwide hotel security use under the brand VingCard. In 2018,
National Geographic listed the Vingcard Hotel Key Card
innovation as one of seven innovations that changed
travel.
Founding of Elsafe 1979 was also the year that Elsafe (then a separate company) invented the world's first
electronic in-room safe, introducing it to the hotel market. The new product was named Elsafe, and the company's first factory was placed in
Mosvik Municipality, Norway. In 1980, Elsafe installed its first safe installation at a property in the
Canary Islands, and it later began selling to hotels on all seven continents.
Bjørn Lyng, Elsafe's founder, wanted to create a security vault that opened and closed electronically, and new electronic safes soon led to an industry-wide shift, where safes requiring metal keys increasingly became obsolete.
Dual acquisition by ASSA ABLOY In 1992–93 VingCard launched the electronic
magnetic stripe card lock to a positive market reception. Tor Sørnes continued as a vice president and director of R&D at VingCard, retiring in 1992. Following the merger in November 1994 between VingCard's former owners, Abloy Security, and the Swedish
Securitas AB, VingCard became part of
ASSA ABLOY, a Swedish lock manufacturer. Elsafe also became part of the ASSA ABLOY Group in 1994, currently the world's largest independent lock group company, which is composed of more than 100 subsidiary international companies. Aside from VingCard Elsafe, ASSA ABLOY also owns
Yale lock,
Sargent and the high-security lock firms of
Medeco in the U.S.,
Mul-T-Lock in Israel,
Fichet-Bauche in France. It is controlled by
Gustaf Douglas through his company
Latour. It has distributors located in over 167 countries.
Merger In 1997, VingCard and Elsafe joined marketing and sales forces and then finally merged to form VingCard Elsafe in 2006. As a single entity, the company counts more than 166 sales offices worldwide. Among its current product focuses are
RFID technology and energy management systems. In 2015 VingCard Elsafe was subsumed by ASSA ABLOY Global Solutions. ==Executives==