Tower Clock Movement, Heisely
date: label: date made
content: ca 1790-1799
name: label: maker
content: Heisley, F. A.
notes: label: Description
content: The German immigrants who founded Frederick, Maryland, believed that time was a divine gift to be spent in productive work. According to their Calvinist values, temporal order was an important component of godly and disciplined behavior. They relied on this tower clock to help them organize and coordinate their daily lives in time. The congregation of Frederick’s German Reform Church (now Trinity Chapel) installed this clock in the church tower in the 1790s. The entire town contributed to buy the clock for about $800 from local clockmaker Frederick Heisely and paid for its maintenance. The clock coordinated activities for the town’s intertwined sacred and secular communities for nearly 140 years.
label: Description
content: When the Smithsonian’s National Museum of History and Technology (now National Museum of American History) was under construction, builders prepared a pit between the first floor and basement to accommodate the clock’s fourteen-foot pendulum. The clock kept time on the first floor of the museum from its opening in 1964 until the 1990s.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view (pendulum)
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Mechanisms
label: See more items in
content: Measuring & Mapping
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: City of Frederick Maryland
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: ME.310382
label: catalog number
content: 310382
label: accession number
content: 111628
objectType: label: Object Name
content: tower clock movement
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 115.2652 cm x 116.84 cm x 101.6 cm; 45 3/8 in x 46 in x 40 in