Antique Clock Collecting: Mystery Clocks

Video Transcript

"During the eighteen hundreds, certain companies, particularly in France developed what were called mystery clocks. We would look at the clock and it wasn't apparent at all how the hands were moving or how the clock was showing the time. This is an example of a very rare and expensive now, Cardea Mystery Clock, where basically the hands are suspended up in a piece of glass, with no obvious way for the hands to be turning. Of course, the movement is in the base, and then driving the clock in a way that's very hard to tell. That concept carried over into the twentieth century with electric clocks, when the company that Jefferson, Jefferson Company out in the midwest, in Illinois, I believe, first developed what was called the golden hour clock, which we see and lot of. And, in smaller numbers, smaller versions of the golden hour clock, in this case this is a much rarer model called the Golden Helm. But, a similar process is at work here, where you see basically the hands suspended in a piece of glass, with no obvious way for this to be working. This is an electric clock, of course, you would plug in and I'll tell you the mystery even though, I'm probably not supposed to. In that, there's a motor in the base which actually rotates the piece of glass, and that carries the minute hand around, and there's a little counter weight on the back, which keeps the hour hand in the right place. So, it's fun to look at, and if you look at it and try to figure it out, that's fun too. And, pretend I didn't tell you how it works. These can be a problem if the motors fail. In the golden hour clocks, the more common bigger ones, there are still parts available. For these smaller ones, it's very hard to replace the motor if that fails, and that's often what does. The nice thing about Golden Hour Clocks, and these type, usually inside their date stamped, mostly from the nineteen fifties. So, you can tell when yours was made, Golden Hour Clocks were given away in the hundreds of thousands free with Philco Televisions."