The Great Historical Clock of America
date: label: Date made
content: ca 1890
notes: label: Description
content: Briefly—but spectacularly—during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, a peculiar set of clocks excited the interest of the American public. These were monumental clocks—towering agglomerations of clockwork, decorative flourishes, animated panels, and mechanical music. Between roughly 1875 and 1900, more than two dozen such giants appeared and toured throughout the United States and Europe.
label: Description
content: These huge clocks were built to compete with the cathedral clock of the French city of Strasbourg. Completed in 1352, it had long been Europe's most famous clock. As the United States became a leading industrial power in the nineteenth century, American clockmakers strove to build monumental clocks greater than Strasbourg's.
label: Description
content: Although the American clocks differed in details, they shared several features—elaborate ornaments, astronomical indicators, and celebrated scenes and figures from the American past. With one exception, each was a labor of many years by a lone craftsman, usually a jeweler by profession and a recent immigrant. Each clock was covered with a riot of colorful folk decorations combining Christian and patriotic items, some mechanically animated. Almost every clock had a professional manager, distinct from the maker, who promoted the clock as the mechanical wonder of the age. The Great Historical Clock of America epitomizes these clocks.
label: Description
content: Regrettably, little is known of its history or its maker. Since Benjamin Harrison is the last president to march by in the procession of figures we assume it was completed about 1893. Handbills found in the clock's packing crates indicate that it toured with Bent and Bachelder's Anglo American Christy's Minstrels as far as Australia and New Zealand. The clock spent most of the twentieth century in a New Hampshire barn, where the owners charged twenty-five cents for a peek at it.
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Mechanisms
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content: Popular Entertainment
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content: American Democracy: A Great Leap of Faith
label: Exhibition
content: American Democracy
label: Exhibition Location
content: National Museum of American History
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1981.0001.01
label: accession number
content: 1981.0001
label: catalog number
content: 1981.0001.01
objectType: label: Object Name
content: automated clock
label: Other Terms
content: clock; Mechanical, Weight-Driven
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: "brass" (movement material)
label: Physical Description
content: wood (case material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 13 ft x 8 ft x 4 ft; 3.9624 m x 2.4384 m x 1.2192 m