Clocks · Watchman's clock
Watchman's Clock - Blick, England, c. 1940
- Maker / attribution
- Unrecorded in source
- Date
- c. 1940
- Historical period
- Golden Age of Mechanical Watchmaking (1900 – 1945)
- Country of origin
- England
- Object type
- Watchman's clock
- Dimensions
- 15 cm (Length), 11 cm (Width), 7.5 cm (Height)
- Holding institution
- Museums Victoria, Melbourne
- Accession / object no.
- ST 25365
- Catalogue title (original)
- Watchman's Clock - Blick, England, circa 1940 (English)
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Record summary
Held and catalogued by Museums Victoria, Melbourne (object number ST 25365), this is a watchman's clock, made in England, dated c. 1940. The Atlas places it in the Golden Age of Mechanical Watchmaking period (1900 – 1945) of its Clocks collection. Recorded dimensions: 15 cm (Length), 11 cm (Width), 7.5 cm (Height). The record is illustrated with 2 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
Watchman's clock made by Blick Time Recorders, Ltd, England, circa 1940. The clock was carried by the watchman. Keys were fixed at the points of inspection and were turned in the clock to make a record on a moving sheet of paper.
Physical description — Museums Victoria
Metal case inside leather case with straps, and hole to show round glass aperture in front of rotating ring dial. Spring wound.
Inscriptions & marks
Inside case marked '560' near lock.
Provenance
Purchase
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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