Nothing of such importance goes so undetected by our senses as the passage of time. The sun’s daily arc provides a rough calculation, but we typically see and keep time by clock faces and digital readouts. Yet, while time is intangible, the progress of timekeeping is deeply embedded in Connecticut’s landscape. It manifests itself in place names like Thomaston and Terryville, in old factories, in museums, and in a futuristic suburban building where the legacy still lives.
Connecticut was home to the world’s first clock factory. By 1809, Eli Terry was mass-producing an astounding 3,000 clocks a year in what is now the Terryville section of Plymouth, at a time when clocks were typically handcrafted at a rate of six to ten annually. He did it by inventing water-powered machinery that made clock wheels and pinions and by the innovative use of interchangeable parts. It was more than a revolution in production that reduced labor costs and lowered prices, making clocks affordable; Terry perfected machines that made other machines from identical machine-produced parts. “It was,” as writer Diana Muir observed, “an idea that would change the world.”
Today, nothing remains of Terry’s factory save an old dam in the woods, but the flagship plant of the company founded by one of his workers remains a strong presence in nearby Thomaston. Seth Thomas may be the most famous name in American clock making, and although the company abandoned the four-story, concrete building—with huge divided-light windows and signature clock tower— in the1980s, the old factory is still occupied by a variety of businesses. The large public clocks the company made are perhaps among the most beloved and best known timepieces in the world. They include the clock in the tower of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall and the gleaming brass fixture at Grand Central Station’s information kiosk.
By the mid-nineteenth century, Connecticut home to the nation’s seven major clock manufacturers. Bristol had two, while the others were in New Haven and Litchfield Counties. Although many of the sprawling factories have since been demolished, some structures linger in various states of repair. In addition to the Seth Thomas plant, these include buildings of the New Haven Clock Company in its namesake city, Gilbert Clock Company in Winsted, and Sessions Clock Company in Bristol’s Forestville section.
Waterbury Clock Company’s old manufacturing plant on the city’s Cherry Street well illustrates the one-time grandeur and large scale of the clock making industry, its precipitous collapse, and the potential for reuse of these once-majestic and productive structures. As much as six stories tall, and arrayed in various shapes and sizes, the imposing redbrick complex occupies more than a city block. Some of the mill has been demolished while large portions are derelict, empty shells with broken glass and cracked, spalling masonry where weeds grow and trash collects. But a large part of the multi-level factory— with its long, narrow windows and elegant corbelling— has been handsomely redeveloped into apartments with neatly kept grounds. Looking at the abandoned and reused buildings standing side-by-side is an instant education in industrial history.
Founded in Waterbury in 1857 because its clockworks would be a major user of the brass produced there, the company once styled itself as “the largest timepiece manufacturer in the world.” But outdated production facilities and sluggish design and marketing almost led to its demise in the early 1930s. Mickey Mouse rescued the company when Walt Disney licensed the cheerful cartoon character for a line of watches and clocks that sold in the millions.
No timepieces have been manufactured in Connecticut for over a generation, and, except for small-scale specialty items, none are produced anywhere in the nation. But Connecticut still retains a link to its clock making past through Timex Corporation, which purchased the remnants of the Waterbury Clock Company in 1941. Timex’s slogan “it takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’” became famous in the 1950s, as newsman John Cameron Swayze narrated watch torture tests by strapping them onto outboard motors or Mickey Mantle’s bat. The company’s low, sleek headquarters with its arched roof and glass walls squats like a spaceship on a hilltop pasture in Middlebury. Though its production is overseas, research and development of groundbreaking, innovative technologies still takes place in Connecticut—something Eli Terry would understand.
Manufacture is long past, but the fruits of almost two hundred years of Connecticut’s production of timepieces are visible at the American Clock and Watch Museum in Bristol and the Timexpo Museum in Waterbury. Thousands of clocks and watches not only tell time; they also mark the progress of history, art, craftsmanship, engineering, marketing, design, sales, innovation, technology, and even humor. Simultaneously beautiful and practical, they demonstrate centuries of change in the ticking of about an hour.
