page_title: National Watch and Clock Museum
section_title: Exhibits
hierarchical_section_title: National Watch and Clock Museum / Exhibits
caption_attribution_description: English: Austrian chariot clock, c. 1810. Carved, painted and gilt wood, depicting a man driving his chariot drawn behind two horses. The figure appears to be a depiction of a Roman emperor. It may also represent Napoleon who was frequently portrayed as an emperor. The wheel of the chariot forming the dial of the clock. Narrow enamelled chapter ring. Thirty-hour movement, verge escapement and grand-sonnerie striking on two bells. National Watch and Clock Museum, Columbia, PA, USA.
context_page_description: The National Watch and Clock Museum, located in Columbia, Pennsylvania, is one of a very few museums in the United States dedicated solely to horology, which is the history, science and art of timekeeping and timekeepers.
  Like its subsidiary institution, the NAWCC Library & Research Center, the National Watch and Clock Museum is operated by the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors, a non-profit organization with about 21,000 members and an educational mission.
context_section_description: The museum attempts to show the complete history of timekeepers from the first non-mechanical devices (sun-dials, hour-glasses, fire-clocks) to the atomic clock and mass-produced wristwatches of the present. The museum's collections include over 12,000 clocks and watches, with about 3,000 on display.
  There is a "Learning Center" introducing some of the basic technologies of the mechanical timekeeper, such as the pendulum, and a large and varied exhibit on many types of clock escapement.  There is an excellent sample of American-made tall case clocks (popularly known as "grandfather clocks"), a comprehensive exhibit on American watches, and a small but excellent area dedicated to automatic machinery used in watch manufacturing.  Other highlights include an exhibit of the pioneering automated machinery developed by the American Waltham Watch Company, allowing for the first time to mass-produce watches using interchangeable parts, a large selection of American pocket watches (including Railroad watches), and the "Engel Clock", a complicated "monument" clock built by Stephen Decatur Engel of Hazleton, Pennsylvania.
  This clock took Engel about 20 years to complete, and it was shown for many years all around the United States starting in about 1877.  The Engel clock disappeared in the early 1950s, and was found in a barn in New York State in 1983.  The Engel clock was purchased and fully restored by the NAWCC in 1989 and is on display at the museum.
  The NWCM has an ongoing schedule of temporary exhibits — usually two of them at a time, one devoted to a general timekeeping-related theme of interest to the public, and the other a more specialized show appealing primarily to horological collectors.
caption: A rare Austrian chariot clock.
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