Clocks · Radio controlled clock
Radio controlled clock Mega by Junghans
- Maker / attribution
- Junghans (maker)
- Date
- 1991
- Historical period
- Mechanical Renaissance (1990 – 2010)
- Country of origin
- Germany
- Object type
- Radio controlled clock
- Materials / technique
- plastic
- Dimensions
- Overall: 198 x 150 x 60 mm
- Holding institution
- Royal Museums Greenwich
- Accession / object no.
- ZAA0750
- Credit line
- National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London
- Catalogue title (original)
- Mega (English)
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Record summary
Held and catalogued by Royal Museums Greenwich (object number ZAA0750), this is a radio controlled clock by Junghans, made in Germany, dated 1991. The Atlas places it in the Mechanical Renaissance period (1990 – 2010) of its Clocks collection. Materials and techniques recorded by the source: plastic. Recorded dimensions: Overall: 198 x 150 x 60 mm. 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
Catalogue description — Royal Museums Greenwich
The Junghans 'Mega' desktop clock receives a long-wave radio signal every day broadcast on 60 KHz (call-sign MSF) from Rugby, UK, carrying time information from Britain's national atomic clocks at the National Physical Laboratory, Teddington. These radio transmissions automatically set the clock right. Similar clocks are made which receive the national radio time signals of other countries including Germany, Japan and the USA. Since the earliest days of radio communications, it was realized that radio waves are an ideal means of distributing precise time. From January 1905, the US Navy broadcast regular time signals at noon (Eastern Standard Time) from Washington, D. C. Germany and France followed suit in 1910, the French signal being transmitted from the Eiffel Tower at midnight. These early time signals required a special receiver, but in 1922, with the first public radio broadcasts by the British Broadcasting Company, the opportunity was taken to provide precise time, with the announcer playing the Westminster chimes on a piano. Two years later the BBC introduced its six-pip time signal, the brainchild of electric clock manufacturer Frank Hope-Jones and the Astronomer Royal, Sir Frank Dyson. From the early 1970s, battery-driven quartz clocks have been made which automatically correct themselves on a daily basis using one of the digitally coded time signals now broadcast across the world.
Historical context
Mechanical Renaissance (1990 – 2010)
Mechanical watches return as cultural objects; independent watchmaking flourishes.
Mechanical clocks returned as luxury and craft objects, alongside radio-controlled and designer quartz clocks. Independent makers and restorers revived traditional techniques, and museums increasingly documented industrial and electric clocks as heritage.
Read the period in the timelineMore clocks from this periodEarlier: Quartz Revolution
Atlas type guide
Domestic clocks
A clock combines four systems: a source of power (falling weight, coiled spring, or later electricity), a gear train that divides time, an escapement and oscillator that regulate it (foliot, pendulum or balance), and an indicating system of dial and hands or a bell. Its history runs from the large iron weight-driven clocks of the late thirteenth century to Renaissance spring-driven table clocks, the pendulum revolution of 1656, the factory clocks of the nineteenth century and electric and quartz clocks of the twentieth.
Domestic clocks also reflect regional furniture and decorative traditions — English longcase and bracket clocks, French pendules, Viennese regulators, Black Forest and American shelf clocks — and therefore record changing tastes as much as technical progress.
What to look for
- How the clock is powered: weights, spring barrel, fusee, electric coil.
- The oscillator: foliot, short pendulum, long seconds pendulum or balance.
- Whether it strikes: hour only (count wheel) or hours and quarters (rack striking).
- The maker or retailer's name on dial and movement, and any factory trademarks.
- Signs of alteration — replaced dials, converted escapements, 'married' cases.
Dating clues
- Before 1656 clocks used foliots or balances; after, most domestic clocks have pendulums.
- Anchor escapements spread after c. 1670; minute hands became common at the same time.
- Factory production in America and Germany transformed prices after c. 1840.
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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