Antique Clocks

According to Wikipedia today’s general usage of the term “clock” refers to “any device for measuring and displaying the time, which, unlike a watch, is not worn on the person”. However, for horologists and other specialists, a clock is a device that contains and employs a striking mechanism. That mechanism is used to announce the time intervals, e.g., hour, half-hour, or quarter-hour by ringing bells, gongs or chimes. If the time-keeping instrument lacks an acoustical means of announcing the time it is traditionally known as a timepiece rather than as a clock.

Measurement of time has been a great concern of human beings since the advent of recorded history. Our intent here is concern ourselves only with clocks; including timepieces, relating to the period of American history and to a certain extent the history immediately preceding and paralleling it. The clocks we enjoy today have their very distant roots in inventions that derived from China, India, the Muslim world and medieval Europe.

By the 18th and 19th centuries clock making, as a skilled trade, was well established in Europe and England. The trade was very carefully controlled by the guilds that operated in those regions. The only way to enter the clock making trade was through an apprenticeship to an established master clock maker who was also a guild member. Under this system, a very limited number of master clock makers could be producing clocks. Therefore, a very limited number of clocks could be produced and they were subsequently quite expensive and well beyond the means of the average person.

It was in America that this system changed. The apprentice system continued to exist because there was no formal means of training and evaluating prospective clock makers. However, the guild system and its control of the clock making trade was left where it belonged – on the other side of the Atlantic ocean. Freed of the constraints and anti-competitive nature of the guilds American clock makers soon began to devise ways of mass producing good quality clocks. Among the antique clock makers Eli Terry holds a special place of honor because he made mass production possible. His antique wood clocks kept remarkably good time and were inexpensive. Their astounding success made clocks available to the average citizen at very affordable prices.

Not only were good quality mass produced clocks, mainly of New England (New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut) origin, made available but very high quality long case clocks were also created. Principally in the Mid-Atlantic States of Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey, individually created long case clocks, sometimes known as grandmother and grandfather clocks, were manufactured by German and English immigrants. The very well crafted mechanisms were housed behind beautifully decorated painted or brass faces and in exceptionally elegant and well crafted cases. A particularly good and recommended book about precision pendulum clocks is Precision Pendulum Clocks: The Quest for Accurate Timekeeping (Schiffer Book for Collectors) (Volume 3)/p>

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