What if you could make a beautiful antique clock, that has spent the last 80 years unused, every bit as accurate and hassle-free as the clock on your phone?

If you're thinking 'I don't need one, I have my phone', you can probably stop reading now.

If you're thinking 'I love me a bit of wall jewellery, and the warm fuzzy feeling that I get when reclaiming the past', then read on.

There's a kind of clock that was widespread in the early/ mid 1900’s. That clock was the electric clock. These clocks didn’t keep track of time themselves, and listened to a central clock and was able to ensure that all the clocks in a large school/factory/station were all in perfect synchrony (Figure 1).

Then the quartz clock came along. The quartz clock was cheap and accurate and its inexpensive mechanism made it a massive success. This made the electric clock far less commonplace.

Figure 1: The Inducta Factory in Zug, Switzerland. Archiv für Zeitgeschichte ETHZ

Comeback

Like any good comeback, the underdog is back (after a training montage) with a new set of skills.

Thanks to the clock driver we built, the old electric clocks are self-adjusting, aware of timezones and as accurate as the internet (ie wayyy more accurate than a quartz clock). We’ve got a carefully-curated selection of these clocks in our store.

Here’s a video of a clock of the same type in the old factory photo, that was rescued from an attic in Switzerland and paired with our clock driver.