Early American Clockmakers: Eli Terry

Video Transcript

"Now we're going to talk about a whole different part of...of clock history in the clock world. While the Willards were busy, and their apprentices were busy in the Boston area, down in Connecticut, we had the rise of true mass-production in clock making. They were trying to get those clock down...clock costs down from, maybe, thirty dollars for a banjo clock, down to maybe just a few dollars. The problem was, that they couldn't make those movements out of brass, because brass was expensive and had to come from England. So what did they do? They looked around for another local, abundant resource, and they came up with wood. A fellow named Eli Terry, very important name in American clock making, and perhaps a name that you've heard of or you're going to hear more about, figured out a way to mass produce clock movements. He really was the originator of mass production in America. Some people talk about the Springfield Armory that made muskets and rifles, but those parts were truly not interchangeable to the degree that interchangeable parts appeared in these wooden...wooden movements. If you look at this, we've actually got plates made out of oak, we have wheels made out of cherry, we have arbors made out of laurel wood perhaps. And only the tiniest bit of metal perhaps in the hands in what's called the escape wheel here, and a few other wires and...and metal pieces. But basically, this is made out of wood. These were made by the millions after Eli Terry figured out, with factory production, how to just crank out hundreds of these wheels at a time. They'd pick 'em out of the basket, put 'em together, and the clock would tick and run. And there are many of these still in existence throughout...throughout the world, really, but particularly in New England. The bad ones, I guess, ended up in the wood stove in 1820. But we're talking about the early eighteen hundreds when these mass produced clocks first came along. Mostly they sold the movements. Local carpenters would make the cases. What you're seeing here is the type of case that a Terry wooden works clock could appear in. In this case, extremely fancy grain painting, or faux painting. Often this has disappeared over time, it's been stripped off, the case has been refinished. But if you can find a grain painted clock like this, you've really got something. And expect to pay several thousand dollars for it. This is...is...you can see they're trying to imitate some of those Roxbury cases, English cases of the time. But this is a wooden works movement in there. One way we can see, is that you see winding holes there, and you say, "That must be an English clock with winding holes." Those are actually fake winding holes to make your neighbors think that you've got an expensive brass works, either Roxbury or English clock. Actually, you had a nice looking case with a Terry style wooden movement inside."