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Entrepreneurship in the Establishment of the American Clock Industry*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

John Joseph Murphy
John Joseph Murphy
Affiliation:
Catholic University
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Extract

Although the aggregate growth rate of the American economy was relatively slow between the Revolution and 1840, certain sectors did expand at a rapid rate, and from these sectors originated some of the factors responsible for the later dynamic growth of the whole system. One such sector involved the making of clocks. Never large by any measure, the clock industry was, nevertheless, a leader in the introduction of the system of interchangeable parts production and in the mass marketing of a “luxury” consumer good. The purpose of this article is to outline and to analyze the transformation of this activity from a craft to an industry and, in particular, to indicate the factors which influenced Eli Terry, the main entrepreneur of the transformation.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , June 1966 , pp. 169 - 186
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1966

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References

1 The fact that its product was a consumer good gives the clock industry a special distinction in innovating at such an early stage in the nation's industrial development. T. S. Ashton commented upon the lack of such innovation in British development: “The varied trades that provided things for the ultimate consumer were (apart from the pottery trade) hardly affected immediately”; The Industrial Revolution, 1760–1830 (London: Oxford University Press, 1948), p. 92Google Scholar.

2 Usher, A. P., A History of Mechanical Inventions (rev. ed.; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954), p. 311Google Scholar.

3 Bowden, W., Karpovich, M., and Usher, A. P., An Economic History of Europe since 1750 (New York: American Book Co., 1938), p. 307Google Scholar.

4 Robert S. Woodbury claims that interchangeable-parts production requires precision machine tools, precision instruments of measurement, accepted measurement standards, and certain techniques of mechanical drawing. By the eighteenth century British clockmakers possessed all of these factors but were still not producing interchangeable parts. They lacked two things: nonhuman power and the concept. Woodbury, , “The Legend of Eli Whitney and Interchangeable Parts,” Technology and Culture, I (1959/1960), 247Google Scholar.

5 The failure of the British trade to incorporate the new techniques is a classic example of Thorstein Veblen's thesis of “the penalty of taking the lead.” Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution (New York: Viking Press, 1954), ch. iiGoogle Scholar.

6 E.g., Bolles, A. S., Industrial History of the United States (Norwich, Conn., 1879), p. 226Google Scholar. Henry Terry comments on the wide currency given to the “jackknife” story in American Clock Making: Its Early History, and Present Extent of the Business (Waterbury, Conn., 1870), p. 2Google Scholar.

7 Ibid., p. 24.

8 Burnap goes on for eight pages describing each operation in great detail. Reprinted in Hoopes, Penrose, Shop Records of Daniel Burnap, Clockmaker (Hartford, Conn.: Connecticut Historical Society, 1958), p. 109Google Scholar.

9 “Historical Sketches of the Town of Bristol,” Bristol (Conn.) Press (Jan. 26, 1872). Chauncey Jerome claimed something similar for Eli Terry, but in this instance Jerome's remembrance may be more fancy than fact; History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years (New Haven, Conn., 1860), p. 36Google Scholar.

10 “A Review of Dr. Alcott's History of Clock-Making,” Waterbury (Conn.) American (June 1, 1853). In the book he published in 1870 Henry phrased it this way: “Most of these when completed were to be delivered to purchasers, who had previously engaged them”; American Clock Making, p. 2.

11 This may be too high an estimate. Chauncey Jerome and Henry Terry place Eli Terry's output in the opening years of the nineteenth century at 6 to 10 clock movements per year. This was larger than the annual output of such a brass-clock maker as Daniel Burnap, who in twenty years “charged for fifty-one clocks and thirteen separate clock dials for which he was paid a total of £667–5–0.” Hoopes, p. 37. The average Pennsylvania clockmaker made 4 or 5 clocks per year. “Had he been able to make more it is improbable that he could have disposed of them”; Eckhardt, George, Pennsylvania Clocks and Clockmakers (New York: Devin-Adair Co., 1955), p. 31Google Scholar.

12 Terry, H., Waterbury American (June 1, 1853)Google Scholar.

13 Fenn, E. A., “Eli Terry's Invention,” The Manufacturing Jeweler V (June 1889), 514Google Scholar.

14 Terry, H., Waterbury American (June 1, 1853)Google Scholar.

15 Land Records, Plymouth, Conn., III (Jan. 23, 1806), 450.

16 Jerome, p. 17. This ridicule must have left a strong impression, for Henry Terry also mentions it in the Waterbury American article.

17 Anderson, J., The Town and City of Waterbury, Connecticut, from the Aboriginal Period to the Year 1895 (New Haven, Conn., 1896), II, 259Google Scholar.

18 H. Terry, Waterbury American; Jerome, p. 36.

19 Land Records, Plymouth, Conn., III (July 21, 1806), 208.

20 H. Terry, Waterbury American. Henry claimed that it took his father “a considerable part of the first year” to outfit the mills purchased in the summer of 1806. Eli Terry, however, did not dispose of the shop obtained in January 1806 until, the end of 1807. This may mean that it took him that long to install the necessary equipment in the larger establishment. This sequence also fits the fact that Terry did not deliver any clocks to the Porters until 1808.

21 Jerome, p. 12. This was a major innovation in the marketing of clocks, even though the peddlers had been selling other items in such places for at least fifty years. See Keir, R. M. “The Tin Peddler,” Journal of Political Economy, XXI (March 1913), 255–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 W. A. Alcott, M.D., “The History of Yankee Clocks and Clock-Making,” Boston (Mass.) Daily Evening Traveler (April 13, 1853).

23 In the autumn of 1810 the Porters began to transfer to Terry property valued at $7,000. Terry used part of this property in transactions which transferred land to four of the most prominent men in Plymouth “in consideration of $2,332.” In checking as efficiently as the Land Records permit, it does not appear that Terry made any capital gains out of these transactions and, inasmuch as he obtained the mills in the summer of 1806 for $2,000, it may be that these four men provided Terry with some of the capital that he needed at that time. These transactions are noted in detail in Murphy, ch. iv. (cited in footnote to title).

24 H. Terry, Waterbury American.

25 Eli Terry sold his factory to two workmen, Silas Hoadley and Seth Thomas. This was the start of the Seth Thomas Clock Co., now a division of General Time.

26 Land Records, Plymouth, Conn., V (Feb. 12, 1814), 326.

27 “Draft of Patent Suit, Eli Terry vs. Seth Thomas,” New Haven, Conn. (April 28, 1827). Reprinted in Mussey, B. and Canedy, R. M., Terry Clock Chronology (Bristol, Conn.: mimeographed, 1948), pp. 25–28Google Scholar.

28 L. Barr, “Eli Terry Pillar and Scroll Shelf Clocks,” supplement to the Bulletin of the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors, IV (Dec. 1952), 3. This clock is usually honored today for its case—which Terry did not design—and very little cognizance is given to Terry's truly remarkable accomplishment in designing the works.

29 George Eckhardt, United States Clock and Watch Patents, 1790–1890 (New York: privately printed, 1960), pp. 29–30, 49–51. The patentees were respectively: James Harrison, Pharris Bronson and Joel Curtis, Joel Curtis and Dimon Bradley, Anson Sperry, and Joel Curtis. These patents were issued only hours before the British burned Washington and consequently they were not given newspaper coverage. The originals perished in the Patent Office fire of 1836 and duplicate copies have never been obtained.

30 Waterbury American (June 1, 1853).

31 Jerome, p. 41. An interesting question is raised about Eli Terry's perception of importance, in that he never obtained a patent for improvements he made in machinery even though he obtained nine patents for changes he made in clock mechanisms.

32 Boyd, John, Annals and Family Records of Winchester, Conn. (Hartford, Conn., 1873), p. 515Google Scholar.

33 “Draft of Patent Suit.” Terry claimed that Thomas “was unwilling to change his tools and machinery to cater upon said new manufacture.”

34 Camp, , Sketch of the Clock Making Business, 1792–1892 (New Haven, Conn., 1893), pp. 2–3Google Scholar.

35 “Address of General Joseph R. Hawley,” in Jennings, J. J., ed., Centennial Celebration of the Incorporation of the Town of Bristol (Hartford, Conn., 1885), p. 72Google Scholar.

36 Jerome, History, p. 39.

37 The central framework of analysis used in this paper is a combination of A. P. Usher's sequence of an “individual act of insight” and the general features of risk and uncertainty theory as developed by G. L. S. Shackle and B. S. Keirstead. See especially, Usher, A History of Mechanical Inventions (rev. ed.; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954)Google Scholar; Shackle, , Time in Economics (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Co., 1957)Google Scholar; and Keirstead, , An Essay on the Theory of Profits and Income Distribution (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953)Google Scholar.

38 Cf. Cochran, Thomas C., “Role and Sanction in American Entrepreneurial History,” in Change and the Entrepreneur (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1949), pp. 163–64Google Scholar; and Tibor de Scitovsky, “On the Decline of Competition,” Social Change, III (1941), 32.

39 The prolific inventiveness of Terry's mind is shown in the number of experimental models of his which are on exhibit in such institutions as the Bristol (Conn.) Clock Museum. Terry's first patent was for a new method of constructing an equation clock; his last for a method of suspending the balance wheels of clocks.

40 Terry's health was apparently not impaired, for fifteen years after he retired he married for the second time—a marriage which resulted in the birth of two sons, one coming when Terry was 70, the other when he was 71.

41 Waterbury American.

42 Ibid.

43 The Manufacturing Jeweler, V (1889), 514Google Scholar.

44 At the beginning of the nineteenth century the clock engine and the plating mill were valued at $30 each, while lathes ranged from $2 to $12. “Inventory of Ezra Dodge,” Probate Court Records, District of New Haven, Conn., 1798; and Hoopes, pp. 97–98.

45 For example, prior to the time he commenced manfacturing clocks Eli Terry had only one apprentice, Heman Clark; H. Terry, American Clock Making, p. 3.

46 H. J. Habakkuk notes something similar about cotton textiles; American and British Technology in the 19th Century (Cambridge, Engl.: The University Press, 1962), p. 33. If clock artisans could have paid higher wages they would have obtained sufficient apprenticeship help, as is shown by the response of local labor to the wages paid by clock manufacturers: “And then, again, the price of labor on the farms around was raised because so many young men were employed in connection with the factory, or in selling them in adjacent towns when made”; Alcott, Boston Daily Evening Traveler (1853).

47 Ibid.

48 Cf. Mirsky, J. and Nevins, A., The World of Eli Whitney (New York: Macmillan 1952)Google Scholar.

49 The greater accuracy required by brass parts was the factor which delayed the successful quantity manufacturing of brass clocks.

50 In communities close to where Terry lived, four men were making wooden clocks in the first decade of the century; they were Lemuel Harrison, Timothy Barnes, Gideon Roberts, and James Harrison.

51 On subjective certainty, objective uncertainty, see B. Keirstead, p. 20 ff.

52 On April 15, 1802, Harrison leased for seven years thirty-six rods of land “including the shop and where the logs now lie which carry the water to Harrison's works ….” Land Records, Waterbury, Conn., XXVII (April 15, 1802), 530. Anderson stated that the shop was seven feet by nine feet; II, 259.

53 Land Records, Waterbury, Conn., XXX (July 26, 1806), 176.

54 Harrison was one of the six men who obtained patents on the same day in 1814.

55 Cf. Anderson, II, 259.

56 Beals, C., The Making of Bristol (Bristol, Conn.: Bristol Public Library Association, 1954), p. 80Google Scholar. Candace Roberts, Gideon's daughter, was a constant visitor at the home of Eli Terry and even lived there for a period in 1806. Diary of Candace Roberts, Bristol Public Library, Bristol, Conn.

57 On the basis of two advertisements which appeared in Connecticut newspapers some writers have claimed that Burnap was utilizing a system of interchangeable parts production by 1790. Hoopes finds no evidence for this. The claims made for Burnap arise from a confusion between precast parts of uniform shape and the mass production of interchangeable parts. All clockmakers had to make parts as uniform in size as possible if they were to avoid the very technical mathematical calculations which the accurate meshing of wheels and pinions of different sizes and functions required. What was different about Burnap is that he produced various components ahead of time and held them in stock until a clock was ordered.

58 Camp, p. 1.

59 “Hiram Camp's Scrapbook of Newspaper Clippings (1860–1890),” Connecticut State Library.

60 Mirsky and Nevins make this point in connection with Eli Whitney, p. 139. Neither Henry Terry nor Chauncey Jerome mentions the system per se.

61 This interpretation of the peddler system runs counter to what is generally accepted. I have developed the case for the peddlers in my “Establishment,” (cited in footnote to title) ch. vi.

62 Dwight, Timothy, Travels in New England and New York (New Haven, Conn., 1821), II, 54Google Scholar.

63 Alcott, Boston Daily Evening Traveler (1853).

64 Pease, John C. and Niles, John M., A Gazetteer of the States of Connecticut and Rhode Island (Hartford, Conn., 1819), p. 59Google Scholar.

65 “Original Reports of Manufactures,” Fourth Census of the United States (1820).

66 Account Books of Rensselaer Upson (1822–1852), Connecticut State Library.

67 Boston, Daily Evening Traveler (1853)Google Scholar.

68 There were also two factories attempting to produce all-brass clocks in quantity. “Original Reports of Manufactures,” Fourth Census. In 1836, just prior to the demise of the wooden-clock industry, there were in Bristol alone sixteen factories making clocks and clock parts and annually producing in excess of 100,000 finished clocks.

69 Cf. Eckhardt, p. 25, and Magee, D. F., “Grandfather Clocks: Their Making and Their Makers in Lancaster County,” Hístorícal Papers and Addresses of the Lancaster County Historical Society, XXI, No. 4 (1927), 65Google Scholar.

70 E.g., Woodworth, Joseph V., American Tool Making and Interchangeable Manufacturing (New York: W. Henley, 1905)Google Scholar.

71 Lathrop, William B., “The Development of the Brass Industry in Connecticut,” Tercentenary Commission of the State of Connecticut, XLIX (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1936), p. 8Google Scholar. The manufacturing of brass clocks became increasingly important from 1832 on. Right after the depression of 1837 a one-day brass clock was developed, which brought an end to the manufacturing of wooden clocks. Most of the key entrepreneurs who brought about this transformation (particularly, Chauncey Jerome, Seth Thomas, and Silas Burnham Terry) received their initial training in manufacturing clocks in Eli Terry's factory.

72 In 1832 Eli Terry, Jr., entered the lock business in what was the forerunner of the Eagle Lock Co.; Atwater, Francis, History of the Town of Plymouth, Connecticut (Meriden, Conn., 1895), pp. 240–41Google Scholar. Another son of Eli's, Silas Burnham Terry, developed in the 1840's a process to harden and temper coil springs. This was just one of the many advances inaugurated by the makers of clock springs. See “Manufacture of Clock Springs.” American Artisan, XIV (January 3, 1872), 11–12Google Scholar. Alexander Johnston claimed that the only competent mechanics Dr. Howe could find when he began to manufacture his machine for making pins were “among the men who had been working on brass clocks”; Connecticut, A Study of a Commonwealth Democracy (Boston, 1890), pp. 360–61Google Scholar. Finally, in the 1850's, a number of clock companies in Bristol began to manufacture mechanical toys; Norton, Bristol (Conn.) Press (May 31, 1872).