Looking around, I spotted two men chattering in front of a beautiful antique clock like so many I’d seen at auction. It looked to be an elongated wall clock with the dial prominently displayed at the top inside a wooden cabinet.
I was eager to take a closer look, but they just wouldn’t leave, lingering longer than necessary to make a full inspection of the auction piece. I love old clocks, from mantle clocks to the very simple and elegant grandfather clocks made by early New England crafters.
The two men finally left and I made my way past the tables of model trains and sundry other items to where they had been standing. I noticed that next to the clock was a crystal chandelier and a box of crystal parts in a box. I wondered if that and not the clock had practically glued them to the spot.
I realized that this was no mere timepiece for the home. Its bottom was a shelf with a metal slot and two small window slits with paper labels marked “In” and “Out” and “Sunday.” Lying on the table in front of the clock were several paper time cards that looked more like sheets to be filled out by hand.
Then I realized that this was an antique time clock. I didn’t recall seeing a time clock at auction before, not even the more common metal ones. This looked to be an antique from early 20th century.
My only “punch the clock” jobs were summer employment while I was in college. As a professional, I never had to punch in to show what time I arrived at work and when I left (because as journalists, you’re always at work in either body or mind).
Since this was my first look at a very old time clock, I was obviously curious about its history and time clocks in general.
The genesis of the time clock goes back to the invention of a machine for an entirely different purpose. During the late 19th century, a U.S. census bureau statistician named Herman Hollerith wanted to find a better way to count the population rather than doing it by hand. It had taken the bureau nearly eight years to count everyone for the 1880 census. So, Hollerith came up with the idea of a punch card machine, and later formed his own company in 1886. His invention allowed the Census to do in one year what had taken eight years in 1880.
Hollerith’s invention sparked others, for entirely different purposes. The Industrial Revolution in the United States had moved more people from day work to hour work into new factories and mills. Records of their comings and goings were kept by clerks who wrote them in longhand in company log books. Then a more efficient method was developed.
In 1888, jeweler Willard Bundy invented the Bundy Key Recorder, which printed the time on a paper tape after workers inserted their numbered key into the machine. The Bundy Museum of Art and History in Binghamton, NY, has recreated a room of Bundy machines from an exhibit at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago.
Also in 1888, Alexander Dey designed his Dial Recorder, which had a large dial on the front with a designated number for each employee. Workers would move a pointer to their number, press it, and the machine would print the time on paper inside the machine.
By 1894, Daniel M. Cooper had improved on the machine even more with his Rochester Recorder. His machine used time cards with seven spaces for days of the week along with “In” and “Out” slots. The workers would put their time card into the machine, and press a lever to record the correct time on their cards. These were closest to what I remember seeing in photos.
Bundy and his brother Harlow started the first time recording machine manufacturing company in the world in 1889, and their biggest customer was the U.S. Post Office. The company was part of several mergers, reorganizations and name changes over the years, and a new company emerged in 1911 with the name IBM. This new company had also absorbed Dey and Hollreith’s businesses.
In 1958, IBM sold its time-clock division to the Simplex Time Recording Co., which itself had been founded in 1894 and whose time clocks were ubiquitous, especially in schools.
The time clock at the auction was from that earlier era when they were of beautiful wood (now they are electronic). Here are photos of some of these early time recording machines.
