I worked at Cycles & Sports on Wisconsin Ave, DC, in 1980-1; mainly a Raleigh dealer, though we also sold Ross, Kalkhoff, Kent, Bridgestone Kabuki, and maybe some other brands. I was a sales and stock clerk, not a mechanic. We had a key making machine, a pretty cool item about the size of a medium TV set. On the wall behind it was a pegboard with a hundred or so different key blanks. If the customer wanted a key made, you found the appropriate blank, and clamped it in the appropriate slot in machine. You clamped their existing key into another slot. You had to be careful to align the shoulder of the key just right, and the shoulder of the blank the same way. When you turned the machine on, it moved sideways. A guide blade followed the notches of the existing key, lifting and dropping as it moved; and the grinder followed its path precisely, cutting the exact same pattern onto the blank. Copying a broken key was more difficult, but by no means impossible. It was pretty fun. Lots of brass shavings!