Instruments · Time clock
Time Clock - Gents, c. 1920
- Maker / attribution
- Unrecorded in source
- Date
- c. 1920
- Historical period
- Golden Age of Mechanical Watchmaking (1900 – 1945)
- Country of origin
- Unrecorded in source
- Object type
- Time clock
- Dimensions
- 39 cm (Length), 22 cm (Width), 94 cm (Height)
- Holding institution
- Museums Victoria, Melbourne
- Accession / object no.
- SH 923099
- Catalogue title (original)
- Time Clock - Gents, circa 1920 (English)
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Record summary
Held and catalogued by Museums Victoria, Melbourne (object number SH 923099), this is a time clock, dated c. 1920. The Atlas places it in the Golden Age of Mechanical Watchmaking period (1900 – 1945) of its Instruments collection. Recorded dimensions: 39 cm (Length), 22 cm (Width), 94 cm (Height). 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
Summary — Museums Victoria
A time clock is a mechanical device used to track the amount of time an employee has worked. Manufactured by Gents' of Leicester. It was used by staff at Mayday Hills Hospital, Beechworth, Victoria, Australia, circa 1920.
Physical description — Museums Victoria
Large time recording clock in wood and glass cabinet. Clock has square white face, black Arabic numerals, minute marks and hands. Clock is key-wound; timing part of clock operated by electricity; pendulum under clock face. Large cylinder for time-recording paper. Blue fabric ribbon runs down length at back of cylinder over metal pins which would push forward blue ribbon to record time on paper.
Inscriptions & marks
Printed clock face: GENTS'/OF LEICESTER/MADE IN ENGLAND.
Provenance
Donation from Mayday Hills Hospital, Sep 1992
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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