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The Transition from Wooden to Brass Clock Movements
This transition is a fascinating chapter in American industrial history, centered primarily in Connecticut during the early 19th century.
The Wooden Movement Era (1800-1840s)
Why Wooden Movements Were Used
Wooden movements were generally used in early American shelf clocks until around 1820, since up until then hand cast and finished brass movements were very expensive. Brass clocks cost about $50 each 200 years ago, which meant that only the well-to-do could afford them. Clocks with wooden movements sold for as little as $6 each, which the nation's then largely agrarian population could afford.
Making the parts out of wood, instead of brass and steel, enabled them to cut multiple pieces simultaneously and make them exactly the same. This was revolutionary for its time—wooden gears could be mass-produced using water-powered saws, while brass parts required expensive hand-casting and fitting.
Pioneer: Eli Terry's Innovation
In 1807, Terry agreed to produce 4,000 tall case clock movements for Edward and Levi Porter of Waterbury in three years. To achieve this unprecedented scale, he developed specialized machinery and adopted the principle of interchangeable parts. This meant that components were made to standardized dimensions, allowing them to be assembled randomly rather than requiring painstaking hand-fitting for each individual clock.
By 1806 he had refined his wood movement and begun to cut the teeth of the wooden gears with water-powered saws. This innovation laid the groundwork for mass manufacturing in the clock industry.
Characteristics of Wooden Movements
The first mass produced American movements were made mostly of wood, including the gears and the plates. The gearing had steel pivots, but those steel pivots turned in wooden bearing holes. While this might seem impractical, these clocks turned out to be quite durable and can still be made to run today.
Although wood works clocks were known to have been hand made in America as early as 1750, they were not mass produced until 1800, and continued to be made until around 1840 when brass clock movements began to be produced in larger numbers.
The Transition Period (1830s-1840s)
The Economic Catalyst
An economic recession in 1837 brought the clock business almost to a halt. This crisis became a turning point for innovation. Chauncey Jerome, a prominent clockmaker, described his breakthrough moment: "It came to my mind instantly that there could be a cheap, one-day brass clock–the case would cost no more, the dials, glass and weights and other fixtures would be the same, and the size could be reduced. I knew there was a fortune in it".
Chauncey Jerome began manufacturing cheap 30-hour brass movements in the 1830's. His innovation made brass movements economically competitive with wooden ones for the first time.
Technical Developments Enabling the Shift
By around 1860 the American movement manufacturers were able to roll out brass sheets large enough to make a clock plate out of a single solid sheet of brass. Therefore, they transitioned out of the "strap" movements and into one piece clock plates.
The development of rolled brass provided a consistent and affordable material suitable for stamping processes, replacing the variability of cast brass or the limitations of wood. The price of brass also dropped and its availability increased because the clockmakers cooperated in organizing companies to supply "clock brass".
The earliest American clocks were all weight driven as the Americans had not yet developed the capacity to make their own mainsprings. Early transitional movements showed this evolution clearly: The front and back plates were not cut from a solid piece of brass, like movements that came a bit later. These plates were made by riveting several pieces of thin brass straps to make a larger "plate". This was necessary because the early Americans were unable to produce sheets of brass large enough to form a complete plate.
Seth Thomas Enters the Brass Market
In 1840, Thomas sent his nephew, Marcus Prince, over to Bristol to learn how Chauncey Jerome was making the cheap 30 hour brass clock. After learning the techniques, Prince returned to Plymouth Hollow and made the first brass clock movements in 1842.
The mid-1840s marked a pivotal transition from wooden movements to brass. This change was facilitated by the availability of cheaper stamped-brass parts from local rolling mills, which became the new standard and significantly boosted production efficiency.
Completion of the Transition (1840s)
By the early 1840's brass movements virtually replaced wooden ones. The last production clocks with wooden movements were made in 1848, just 10 years after the "cheap" brass clock was introduced by Chauncey Jerome.
Why Brass Replaced Wood: Key Advantages
1. Durability and Reliability Wood is of course inferior to brass in durability and especially so because it is so vulnerable to humidity (which is why clocks with wooden movements couldn't be exported). This was a critical limitation—wooden movement clocks were essentially restricted to the domestic American market.
2. Cost Reduction Mass production techniques and the availability of rolled brass drove prices down dramatically. Production zoomed to hundreds of movements a day, and brass clock prices steadily dropped down to as little as $1.50 by 1880.
3. Material Efficiency The plates could have remained solid without the rectangular holes you see below. But there are two reasons why they did not do this. The first reason was to save valuable material. by cutting out the areas that technically were not necessary, they would have smaller brass sheets to make additional clock parts from. The second reason is that it gave them greater access to the internal mechanical components so they could be adjusted more easily after assembly.
4. Improved Manufacturing Metal stamping presses allowed components like plates and bridges, previously cast or cut from sheet metal by hand, to be quickly formed from brass sheets. Improved jigs and tools were introduced, and the parts were interchangeable — unlike those in rifles made by Eli Whitney, who is wrongly credited as the first American to achieve interchangeability of parts.
5. Design Flexibility Another way to lower costs was to make clock cases smaller, especially by energizing the movements with compact brass springs instead of weights at the ends of long cords. As movements shrank in size, it became possible to create smaller, less expensive clocks.
6. Agricultural Context Interestingly, the limitations of wooden movements weren't critical for their original market. So what, if they were a few minutes off? For most farmers, absolute accuracy wasn't essential. However, as American society industrialized and railroad schedules became important, precision timekeeping became more valuable.
Legacy
This transition represents one of the earliest examples of true mass production in America, predating even Henry Ford's assembly line. The wooden-to-brass movement transition was driven by a perfect storm of economic necessity, technological innovation, material science advances, and changing market demands—transforming clocks from expensive luxury items into affordable household goods within just two decades.
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