Self Winding Clock Company - Selling Exact Time---A New Industry

Selling Exact Time---A New Industry

The motivation for establishing the Self Winding Clock Company was early entry into a revolutionary and potentially profitable new industry. The product this new industry was selling -- Exact Time. This became possible following the development of the telegraph. The first marketers of time were observatories. The observatories used their celestial equipment to measure exact time and then transmit a time signal via telegraph lines to subscribers. This was done for a fee! In the 1850’s and 1860’s communication and travel between cities became more common. The practice of observing local time was becoming obsolete and the need for everyone to agree to the exact time became essential. The railroads recognized that safety was related to precise timing and all timepieces in a given area must be set to the same time. The heads of the major railroads met on October 11, 1883, in Chicago to adopt our Standard Time System. The country was divided into four time zones with exactly one hour difference in each zone. The four time zones are part of the world wide system of Standard time ---a set of 24 somewhat equally spaced meridians tied to the daily cycle of daylight and darkness. It is based in Greenwich, England and termed Greenwich Mean Time. Observatories had been selling exact time since the 1850’s and transmitting the noon time signal via telegraph lines to customers, usually nearby cities and railroads. The signals were transmitted to sounders as second ticks and pauses that culminated in a noon time signal. The subscriber’s clock could then be manually adjusted to exactly noon. For providing this exact time service there was a monthly or yearly charge. Observatories were affiliated with colleges or universities with the exception of the United States Naval Observatory (USNO) which is affiliated with the United States government. Competition for customers was keen between observatories but by 1887 the USNO was recognized as the provider of Observatory Standard Time by the General Time Convention that had been convened by the countries railroads . This ended the intense competition for providing exact time. Western Union’s time service distributed the time signal via its telegraph lines. Western Union had years of experience in transmitting USNO time signals and ultimately emerged as the provider of nationwide telegraph lines for the noon time signal.

The competition for selling exact time necessitated developing a reliable master clock and auxiliary clocks. Connecting multiple clocks via electrical wires in a system had proved feasible. Two slightly different master clock-slave clock concepts emerged. The first entailed the use of an electro-mechanical “synchronizer” to forcibly bring the minute hand to the 12 position exactly on the hour. Each of the clocks in this system used a complete clock mechanism with the addition of a synchronizer. A central clock (master clock) sent the synchronizing signal along telegraph lines to each clock assuring that all clocks displayed exactly the same time. The individual clocks in this system had self-contained batteries and required 3 volts direct current (DC) to operate. The batteries for the synchronizing system transmission were located in a central office. The use of the mechanical synchronizer was the design of Chester Pond and his associates as they formed the SWCC in 1886. A second approach to synchronized time transmitted along wires was to connect a master clock to relatively simple secondary clocks (slave clocks). The slave clocks did not have complete clockworks but simply a mechanism that, when energized electrically from the master clock, would advance the clock hands one unit of time. The slave clock would display the exact same time as the master clock. Slave clocks were much less complicated to manufacture and required little or no servicing. Initially they were more prone to failure. Each of the slave clocks had wires that connected to the master clock. The master clock in this system required 24 volts DC to both wind the master clock and as a source of current to advance the hands of the slave clock. These master-slave systems were more suited for individual buildings such as schools or factories rather than locations that were great distances apart. A master-slave clock system was developed and marketed in 1886 by Charles D. Warner and operated as the Standard Electric Time Company. The accuracy of the master-slave system was dictated by the accuracy of the master clock and reliability of the slave clocks. Over the years correction systems were developed for the master-slave systems that rendered the systems very reliable and accurate. In the first three decades of the 20th century many more companies entered the selling time business. When one considers the entire country, the number of synchronized clock systems installed in learning institutions, factories, businesses, government installations, transportation facilities, etc., etc. was enormous. Many hundreds of thousands of slave clocks and probably tens of thousands of master clocks were manufactured, sold, installed and serviced by people involved in the exact time for sale business.

Synchronized time systems were originally powered by batteries and most up through the 1950’s operated on low voltage direct current. Eventually the new systems were designed to operate on alternating current. For many years selling exact time was a major industry. Presently the Global Positioning System (GPS) space-based satellite navigation system now provides our exact location and time information. Slave clocks, which were an integral part of the synchronized time system, now are often replaced with battery operated clocks that are linked to the atomic clock signal for synchronizing. Selling exact time has a fascinating history but its importance as an industry has been superseded.