Clocks · Time register
Clock by Cox-Walkers of Darlington, England, 1900-1939
- Maker / attribution
- Cox-Walkers of Darlington (maker)
- Date
- 1900-1939
- Historical period
- Golden Age of Mechanical Watchmaking (1900 – 1945)
- Country of origin
- England
- Place
- Darlington, Darlington, England, United Kingdom, Darlington
- Object type
- Time register
- Dimensions
- overall: 320 mm x 790 mm x 350 mm,
- Holding institution
- Science Museum Group, London
- Accession / object no.
- 1996-271/26
- Credit line
- Princess Royal Hospital
- Catalogue title (original)
- Time register, or ‘Pegging Clock’
Record summary
Held and catalogued by Science Museum Group, London (object number 1996-271/26), this is a time register by Cox-Walkers of Darlington, made in Darlington, Darlington, England, United Kingdom, Darlington, dated 1900-1939. The Atlas places it in the Golden Age of Mechanical Watchmaking period (1900 – 1945) of its Clocks collection. Recorded dimensions: overall: 320 mm x 790 mm x 350 mm. The record is illustrated with 3 photographs.
Assembled from the source record's structured fields. Dates and attributions are given as the source states them; where a field is missing the Atlas leaves it blank rather than estimating.
Catalogue description
Science Museum Group description
A system of ‘tell–tale clocks’ was installed in Sussex Lunatic Asylum in 1890. They checked the timings of night patrols. There were 400 patients when the Asylum opened in 1859. Doors to the wards and corridors were locked. Attendants patrolled the male and female sleeping areas. The attendant operated the mechanism with a key. This made an electrical contact with the master control in the Hall Porter’s office. The master control was geared to a clock mechanism with a rotating drum. Graph paper, marked to coincide with an ordinary time clock, was placed over this drum every night. Pen and ink tracers showed the exact time and location a key was inserted. It showed staff were alert and where they should be. It also showed they were safe from attack. This system is symbolic of the rules, regulations and surveillance routines in large Victorian asylums. It also shows how staff as well as patients were rigidly controlled by institutional life. This contrasts with the flexible care now offered by psychiatric nurses in the community.
Inscriptions & marks
;
Historical context
Golden Age of Mechanical Watchmaking (1900 – 1945)
The wristwatch displaces the pocket watch; waterproof cases, self-winding and grand complications.
Between 1900 and 1945 clocks were electrified: master-clock systems ran factories and offices, synchronous mains clocks entered homes, and the Shortt free-pendulum clock set new standards of accuracy before the first quartz clocks (1927). Art Deco design reshaped mantel and table clocks.
Read the period in the timelineMore clocks from this periodEarlier: Industrial Revolution
Atlas type guide
Timers, stopwatches, chronoscopes and time recorders
Instruments for measuring short intervals or recording when something happened form a large and practical branch of horology. Sports stopwatches and split-seconds timers, laboratory chronoscopes (such as Hipp's, which measured thousandths of a second for psychology and ballistics experiments), metronomes for music, watchmen's clocks that recorded patrol rounds, and the time recorders that clocked factory workers in and out all derive from clock and watch technology.
These objects matter historically because they show timekeeping leaving the observatory and the drawing room and entering industry, science and sport. Many were mass-produced, and their dials, scales and patents chart the rise of electrification and industrial management.
What to look for
- Scales graduated in fifths, tenths or hundredths of a second, or decimal minutes for industrial use.
- Start, stop and reset push-pieces; a second hand that can be stopped independently (split seconds).
- Recording devices: paper discs or tapes, printing mechanisms, keys or punches.
- Patent numbers and dates on the dial or case, which give a terminus post quem.
Dating clues
- Hipp chronoscopes were made from the 1840s into the twentieth century.
- Employee time recorders spread from the 1890s (Bundy, IBM, International Time Recording Co.).
- Quartz and electronic timers replaced mechanical stopwatches in sport from the 1970s.
General guidance written by the Atlas editors about this kind of object. It is not a statement about this particular piece; for that, rely on the source record above and on physical examination.
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