Antique Clocks
Timekeeping and Connecticut
Timekeepers
by Wayne Mattox
"Excuse me sir, I've been on a long journey and
I need to set my carriage clock to match your local
standard. Have you the correct time?" The man dressed in
overalls stared up at the richly attired gentleman on the
buggy seat. "Why, it's noon, of course," the barrel-maker
said. The gentleman took off his black top hat as an
extension of courtesy. "I failed to glimpse you
consulting your pocket watch sir. Is your measurement one
of scientific standard, or a gauge that you estimate
according to sun's zenith?" The cooper put down his wood
mallet and scratched his head. "My son's too young to
know anything about telling time and such, Mister. And
the only science I can speak to is that which goes on in
my belly. It starts to grumble everyday at noon. On
account of its lunchtime and I get hungry!"
A clock is a tool that stores energy in such a way that it can
be released in consistent measurable increments for gauging
time's passing. Modern style devices of this type have been
around for only three hundred years: A brief history
considering the 360-day, 12-month, sun & moon-regulated
calendar was introduced in Egypt over 6000 years ago. In a way,
celestial movements are a type of clock themselves. The
pendulum clock was introduced in 1656. Crude pocket watches
were invented in 1675. In the 18th century, accurate
grandfather and other types of sophisticated brass movement
timekeepers became available to that sprinkling of wealthy
citizens that could afford them. In Connecticut's Naugatuck
River Valley: clock makers, brass workers and machinists were
instrumental toward improving this situation. In first half of
the 19th century, under the freedom and competitive environment
of Yankee capitalism, they invented and produced clocks average
citizens could afford. Arguably, the greatest of these
entrepreneurs, Eli Terry, developed mass-production and
interchangeable-part technology to economically produce a form
of "box clock." Amazingly, Terry's famous "Pillar and Scroll
Mantle Clock" sold over 6000 models in 1817, the first year of
its production. The $15 to $20 priced timekeeper housed in an
elegant case was instrumental in sprouting competing clock
models and makers not only in Connecticut but worldwide.
Waterbury's brass industry giant, Benedict & Burnham would
throw its hat into the clock-making ring in the 1850's,
establishing The Waterbury Clock Company. Technologically
initiated by brothers Noble and Chauncey Jerome (top
clockmakers hired by the Benedict & Burnham), Waterbury
Clock Company would thrive and eventually prove to be the
ancestor to: Timex Corporation, U.S. Time, Robert Ingersoll
& Brothers and Waterbury Watch. While clock technology had
blossomed by the mid 19th century, society's understanding of
timekeeping and even time itself was still in its infancy.
Arguably, it still is.
One of my favorite stories in Kathleen McDermott's 1998 book,
"TIMEX – A Company and its Community" concerns adjustments
Americans were forced to make following the introduction of
speedy transcontinental trains.
Time had always been measured region-by-region and town-by-town
according to the sun's passage. Not surprisingly, in the mid
19th century hundreds of local time zones spread their way east
to west across American. This was easy enough to adapt to in
the stagecoach days when long journeys took weeks or months to
complete. Four thousand mile rail lines and stream-powered
trains changed all that. Timetable errors became numerous,
overwhelming and potentially disastrous concerning shared train
tracks. Adjustments were gradually instituted. Finally, noon,
November 18, 1883 the United States established four standard
time zones: Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific. While the
conversion undoubtedly seemed a plan of genius to the engineers
who devised it, the new "Railway Time" was not so easy
understood by most citizens across the country. "How can a
single day have two noons?" they puzzled. "And I don't
understand how I can take a five minute horse ride west, over
some time-zone line, and have my pocket watch read 55 minutes
different than the folks I rode only a mile or two to visit?
Time never went backwards in the good old days-before trains
and technology started changing everything!"
From an antique collectors' standpoint, one of the interesting
aspects of this period are surviving products inevitably
produced to lessen some of this confusion. Market-oriented
companies like Ingersoll produced pocket watches with multiple
hands displaying both the "old time" and the "new time." An
1883 company advertisement for their pocket watch reads "Dial
No 1 represents the starting point of the new standard time at
12 o'clock, Nov. 18th … Dial No. 2 represents the old time at
the exact time when the new time starts. When it is 12 o'clock
in the Eastern Section, it will be at 11 o'clock all through
the second (Central) section."
"A day with two noons and a watch with two times!" Next time
you drive by the Timexpo Museum off Route 84 in Waterbury and
you see the Easter Island statue standing prominently on the
grounds, think about this: Time's passing has as much to do
with travel and history and physics as is has to do with your
Timex watch. When it comes to fully understanding what "time"
is all about, we humans have probably much more to learn than
we know. Maybe more than we can ever know. Time will tell.
by AntiqueTalk.com
Reprinted with
permission
Copyright by Wayne Mattox
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