Instruments · Time Clock & Time Card Boards
Time Clock & Time Card Boards - IBM, c. 1960
- Maker / attribution
- Unrecorded in source
- Date
- c. 1960
- Historical period
- Modern Mechanical Horology (1945 – 1969)
- Country of origin
- Unrecorded in source
- Object type
- Time Clock & Time Card Boards
- Dimensions
- 31 cm (Length), 36 cm (Height); 31 mm (Length), 36 mm (Height)
- Holding institution
- Museums Victoria, Melbourne
- Accession / object no.
- SH 891043
- Credit line
- Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
- Catalogue title (original)
- Time Clock & Time Card Boards - IBM, circa 1960 (English)
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Record summary
Held and catalogued by Museums Victoria, Melbourne (object number SH 891043), this is a time clock & time card boards, dated c. 1960. The Atlas places it in the Modern Mechanical Horology period (1945 – 1969) of its Instruments collection. Recorded dimensions: 31 cm (Length), 36 cm (Height); 31 mm (Length), 36 mm (Height). The record is illustrated with 5 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
Summary — Museums Victoria
Time clock made by IBM, circa 1960 and 4 time card boards, each containing up to 50 time cards. Used at Simpson's Gloves Pty Ltd, Richmond, for workers to punch in and out each day. Simpson's Gloves Pty Ltd was formed in 1924 and produced leather gloves and coats, handbags, helmets and associated leather goods. The company first operated in Smith Street, and subsequently Alexandra Parade, Collingwood, relocating to Victoria Street, Richmond in 1928, where it remained until 1988.
Physical description — Museums Victoria
.1 IBM Time clock made of metal for workers to clock on and off. .2, .3, .4, .5 Four identical wooden boards to hold time cards. Each board holds fifty cards. IBM stamped on the bottom of each board.
Provenance
Cultural Gifts Donation from Mr Alistair Mitchell, 1989
Historical context
Modern Mechanical Horology (1945 – 1969)
Tool watches for divers, pilots and astronauts; electric watches anticipate the electronic age.
Electronic instruments, quartz frequency standards and the first atomic clocks transformed precision timing in laboratories and broadcasting.
Read the period in the timelineMore instruments from this periodEarlier: Golden Age of Mechanical Watchmaking
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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