One measure of the preeminence of Chauncey Jerome’s clocks was their geographical reach. In 1816 at the age of 22, Jerome carted his first 12 clocks from Plymouth, Connecticut, to Bristol, returning to his shop with $144. By 1844, when he set up the first clock factory in New Haven—a building of which still stands on Hamilton Street—he had shipped $150,000 worth of clocks to England, less than two years after deciding to try. By 1856, when a catastrophic deal forced his Jerome Manufacturing Co. into bankruptcy, Jerome’s clock factory was the largest in a world that was making wide use of his timepieces.
This was, in part, a function of Jerome’s access to ships in New Haven’s harbor and, eventually, the availability of local labor. But it was primarily due to changes in how clocks were made, some of which were innovated by Jerome himself.
Jerome had learned his trade on clocks made of wood and, as he later explained in his autobiography, History of the American Clock Business for the Last 60 Years, and Life of Chauncey Jerome, Written by Himself (1860), “wood clocks were good for a time, but it was a slow job to properly make them… But this was not the only trouble; being on water long as they would have to be, would swell the wood of the wheels and ruin the clock.”
Wooden gears, the turning of which dictated the turning of the wood clock’s hands, had been the primary innovation of Connecticut clocks since colonial times (when brass was scarce). Clockmakers in the Bristol area designed machines to turn out wooden parts in an increasingly standardized fashion—one such patent describes “the introduction of three arbors or mandrels by means of which one row of teeth on a number of wheels was finished by one operation”—and they also converted watermills to power circular saws and other cutting equipment. But they were still carving intricately toothed gears out of wood, a few at a time. And the wooden clocks could only be delivered in working order from Connecticut to contiguous territories, over dry land.
Brass gears made for sturdier, seaworthy clocks, but they were no less painstaking to make. According to Some Observations Concerning Connecticut Clockmaking, 1790-1850 (c. 1970) by Kenneth D. Roberts, the gear wheels were cast in sand molds and, after further sawing and filing, the teeth were cut into them by hand-cranked machine. The interaction of metal gears of different sizes and different numbers of teeth likely resulted in a more accurate minute hand, but brass movement also resulted in fewer, more expensive clocks. An 1810 assessor’s report from the town of Bristol lists 49 “wooden wheel” clocks in the sitting rooms of Bristolians—assessed at $7 each—and only one “brass wheel” clock, assessed at $20.
Eventually, foundries specialized in casting the wheels so clockmakers could concentrate on machining, and some clockmakers did just that, which allowed them to turn out their wares more quickly. But when Jerome made his first 12 clocks, he was neither casting nor machining, instead assembling parts he had purchased from other clockmakers. Clockmakers could enter the business as contractors that way and subsequently collaborate, making clocks with parts from multiple workshops. In this spirit, Jerome’s first factory in New Haven specialized in making only clock cases.
Jerome’s primary innovation, which was the beginning of putting all the specialized clock workshops under one factory roof, was to turn out brass gears by stamping them. Instead of being cut by machine, one or a few at a time, the wheels were placed between iron dies. A 250 lb. weight was then dropped onto the dies from ceiling height. “It will no doubt, astonish a great many to know how rapidly they can be made,” Jerome boasted. “I will venture to say that I can pick out three men who will take the brass drop, there cut the teeth, and make all of the wheels in every clock...”
Jerome had also designed a clock movement with four gears instead of the then-standard eight. In his lifetime, clocks were trending smaller. Having been large enough to be considered furniture, they were traditionally fitted into seven-foot-tall cases to accommodate a pendulum and a weight. The pendulum’s swing was calculated to articulate exactly one second, and the weight traveled a similar distance to keep the gears in motion for at least 24 hours. Clock minders literally wound the hanging weight back up to wind up the clock. By varying the number and size of the gears between the pendulum and the weight, clockmakers were able to shorten both. Smaller, more affordable clocks resulted. By 1850, the “cottage clock” had debuted in Connecticut with no hanging weight at all. Its movement was instead actuated by a spring, and it stood only 10 inches tall.
The next major leap in movement actuation was made by the New Haven Clock Company, a successor business that introduced clocks powered by electric motors in 1929. The company had already advanced and simplified the mechanics of clockmaking to produce bedside alarm clocks, pocket watches and wall clocks that were no bigger than their faces. It turned out thousands of clocks per day and just as quickly shipped them all over the world.
By that time, Chauncey Jerome was already a footnote in the company’s origin story. His own titular company had collapsed due to a bad business deal with another clock company owned by P. T. Barnum. The New Haven Clock Company was incorporated under his nephew Hiram Camp’s leadership in order to take over his assets. But he could still claim in his writing to have been a success. “Meeting a sea captain one day, he told me that on landing at the lonely island of St. Helena,” wrote Jerome, “the first thing he noticed on entering a house, was my name on the face of a brass clock.” Looking back on a period in clockmaking that could still be thought of as pre-industrial, he was as proud of where his clocks wound up as he was of how his clocks were wound up.
Written by David Zukowski. Image 1 features the face of a Chauncey Jerome clock made in New Haven. Image 2 features Chauncey Jerome as depicted in his book.
