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Eli Terry is truly the father of American mass-production clockmaking.
Early Life and Training (1772-1793)
Eli Terry Sr. was born on April 13, 1772, in East Windsor, Connecticut to Samuel and Huldah Burnham Terry.
From age 14 Terry was apprenticed to clockmaker Daniel Burnap of East Windsor, who in turn had been apprenticed to the British immigrant clockmaker Thomas Harland. Terry acquired the metalworking skills to make brass movements during this apprenticeship. Terry's teachers for wooden movements were probably Timothy or Benjamin Cheney, clockmaking brothers from East Hartford.
Unusually, he apprenticed for both brass and wooden clocks.
In 1793, at age 21, Terry opened his own business in the area that became known as Plymouth, Connecticut.
Early Career and Innovation (1793-1807)
Once on his own, Terry specialized in thirty-hour wooden movements for tall case clocks, although he accepted commissions for brass movements as well. Over a period of years, he experimented with many variations of thirty-hour movements.
A skilled clockmaker was able to make around six to ten clocks per year, with a clock costing around €400–900 in nowadays prices.
First Patent
Terry received the first clock patent granted by the United States Patent Office in 1797—one of 10 such patents awarded to Terry during his lifetime.
Waterpower Innovation
About 1803 he devised ways to use waterpower to operate his machines. In order to make his clockmaking operations even more efficient, Terry built a series of factories in Plymouth, Connecticut on the banks of the Pequabuck river, which allowed him to utilize water power to drive his machinery.
The Revolutionary Contract (1807-1810)
This is where Terry made history:
In 1807 he hired Seth Thomas and Silas Hoadley to carry out a contract to make 4,000 wooden clock movements for Edward Porter and Levi G. Porter.
The first year he constructed the necessary machinery to manufacture his clocks, and the second year he produced 1,000 clocks. By developing a process for mass producing the clocks, instead of relying on components that had to be handcrafted, Terry was able to produce the final 3,000 clocks in the third year.
In 1806, Eli Terry shocked the world by successfully completing a massive order to produce four thousand clock mechanisms in only three years' time, thanks to his innovative manufacturing methods.
This was revolutionary. Between roughly 1790 and 1820, American clockmaking changed from a handicraft to an industry. The principal setting for this transformation was western Connecticut, the principal product was the wooden clock movement, and the main character was Eli Terry.
The Shelf Clock Revolution (1814-1816)
When this was completed in 1809, Terry went into semi-retirement, but he continued some business for himself. His specialty was then the manufacture of one-day wooden shelf clocks, designed in 1814 and patented two years later.
This shelf clock was Terry's masterpiece - a compact, affordable timepiece that could sit on a mantel or shelf rather than requiring floor space like a tall case clock. The design became known as the "pillar and scroll" clock due to its distinctive case style with columns on either side and a scrolled top.
Manufacturing Innovations
Terry's factory was the first to use standardized parts in clock-making and the first to use machinery to create clocks. At his factory, wooden gears were originally fabricated using a hand-operated machine with a foot-powered lathe. Shortly after using waterpower, he created jigs that helped make standardized clock parts, so the factory could produce more parts per year.
Terry was a mechanical engineering prodigy who revolutionized world manufacturing by demonstrating how clock parts could be produced faster and cheaper by machine than by hand and helped earn Connecticut a reputation as an international leader in precision manufacturing in the process.
Impact on Society
Terry's clock-manufacturing techniques and designs made clocks household objects by the 1830s. Previously, clocks were luxury items owned only by the most well off in society. The low cost of Terry's clocks, however, allowed them to permeate all economic and social strata and allowed for the clock to become a ubiquitous addition to the American household.
Business Partnerships and Family
Terry's brother Samuel (1774–1853) was also involved in the production of wooden-movement clocks, and for several years he worked as Eli's partner, manufacturing improved pillar and scroll clocks after his brother's design.
Three of Terry's sons also became clockmakers. His son Eli Terry Jr. was the most notable, as the village of Terryville in Plymouth, Connecticut was named after him.
Eli Terry was born to Samuel and Huldah Burnham at East Windsor. His wife was Eunice Warner (Married March 12, 1795), and they had several children including: Anne (born 1796), Eli (born 1799), Henry (born 1801), James (born 1803), Silas Burnham (born 1807), Sarah Warner (born 1809), Huldah (born 1811), and George (born 1815). After Eunice Warner's death in 1839, he married Harriet A. Pond, and they had two children, one named Stephen.
Competition and Patents
Others in the Bristol and Plymouth communities manufactured movements, cases or other clock parts for others to assemble and sell complete clocks in order to compete with Terry. Terry was forced to continually update his patents. Paradoxically his updated patents became very narrowly described and this enabled competitors to make slight changes to their design and evade patent infringement.
In 1826-7, Eli Terry filed a lawsuit in Litchfield district court against Seth Thomas for patent infringement. Judgement was in favor of Terry but it is unclear if he ever collected compensation.
Eli Terry's success in mass-producing and selling an affordable shelf clock for the public provided much inspiration to other entrepreneurs in Connecticut and beyond. Immediately, Terry's former partners Seth Thomas and Silas Hoadley began making similar clocks.
Tower Clocks
Terry also produced wooden-movement tower clocks, such as those found in the steeples of churches and meeting houses, one of which is still operational today in the town of Plymouth. Eli Terry made three tower clocks. His first, made entirely of wood, was donated to the Center Church on the Green at New Haven in 1825. The second movement was donated in 1828 to the Congregational Church of Plymouth Hollow (Later Thomaston Congregational Church). Terry's third movement was donated to the Terryville Congregational Church in 1838.
The movement from New Haven was removed from the steeple and reinstalled at the Plymouth Congregational Church in 1838, where it still runs today. The Plymouth tower clock movement is the only undisturbed original wooden gear tower clock in existence.
Later Years and Retirement
Terry became very rich with his business. However, it was not what he wanted, and in 1820 he retired (again) (other sources say 1833). He did what he forced others to quit, making custom clocks by hand. His workshop was one of the last traditional clock shops, as he had forced everybody else out of the business.
His achievements place him in an unusual position in the history of clockmaking, leaving him as one of the last of the clock craftsmen, but also as the first of the true manufacturers. His shop represents one of the last Connecticut clock shops in which there was both pride in workmanship and a high level of personal skill and aptitude.
Death and Legacy
He died on February 24, 1852, at the age of eighty-one (some sources say age 79).
His last clock, a simple box-shaped wall clock, hangs in the American Clock and Watch Museum in Bristol, Conn. Terry's masterpiece clocks are on display in museums all across the country, including the Wadsworth Atheneum, Yale University Art Gallery and the Smithsonian Museum of American History.
Eli Terry was a prime example of a successful engineer who made a fortune out of his own ingenuity.
Historical Significance
Overall, he destroyed old-style clockmaking, but at the same time he made clocks affordable for everyone using mass production and interchangeable parts. He was definitely a pioneer in manufacturing!
Eli Terry stands alongside other early American mass production pioneers, working contemporaneously with Honoré Blanc in France and predating John Hall at Harpers Ferry Armory. His achievement was remarkable: he transformed clockmaking from an artisan craft producing a few dozen pieces per year into an industry producing thousands, making timepieces available to ordinary Americans for the first time in history.
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