Instruments · Time recorder
Electric time recorder, made by Gledhill Brook, used in Bay 2 of Mather & Platt Park Works, Manchester, c.1920-90. Serial number 29369.
- Maker / attribution
- Gledhill Brook (maker)
- Date
- 1930
- Historical period
- Golden Age of Mechanical Watchmaking (1900 – 1945)
- Country of origin
- Unrecorded in source
- Object type
- Time recorder
- Dimensions
- Overall: 1117 mm x 480 mm x 390 mm, 35 kg
- Holding institution
- Science Museum Group, London
- Accession / object no.
- Y2009.55
- Catalogue title (original)
- Electric time recorder
Record summary
Held and catalogued by Science Museum Group, London (object number Y2009.55), this is a time recorder by Gledhill Brook, dated 1930. The Atlas places it in the Golden Age of Mechanical Watchmaking period (1900 – 1945) of its Instruments collection. Recorded dimensions: Overall: 1117 mm x 480 mm x 390 mm, 35 kg. The record is illustrated with 1 photograph.
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
This is a Gledhill-Brook Time Recorder that was used at Mather and Platt's factory at Park Works, Newton Heath. It allowed the factory workers to mark when their shift started (clocking in) and ended (clocking out). The factory had at least 30 of these clocks to keep track of workers’ shifts across its 17 bays. This particular time recorder was used by the new apprentices in the factory. In the early 1990s this system of recording worker’s time was made obsolete by new digital systems. After they were removed, the old clocks were raffled off to employees of the factory. This clock was won by John Stinton, who then gave it to the museum in 2009.
Historical context
Golden Age of Mechanical Watchmaking (1900 – 1945)
The wristwatch displaces the pocket watch; waterproof cases, self-winding and grand complications.
Timing instruments became electrical and specialised: industrial time recorders, sports timers and aviation instruments.
Read the period in the timelineMore instruments 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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