Old school locks
 

What kinds of locks did people use, say, 50 years ago? Before that?

I would assume a length of chain and a padlock. Keep in mind that 50 years ago most people didn't lock there house door in some locales.

Hmm, when I was riding as a kid in the early 60's we had these lame bicycle locks that looked sort of like a cheap combination lock (which they were) with an elongated hasp. The idea was to lock your wheel to a bike rack.

You don't see many (any?) antique security items in the eBay vintage bikes section. Probably just not locking them was fairly common; things were a lot different back then in that regard.

Mark