The collection at The Clockworks was assembled over 30 years by horologist and historian James Nye. It includes over 150 examples of electrical clocks and associated technologies from across Europe, spanning c.1840 up to the 1970s. These are displayed in an onsite museum charting the development of electrical and precision horology, and the concept of synchronised, or ‘universal’ time. The collection is supported by a substantial specialist horological library and archive.

Networked time

The collection includes clocks produced for time distribution and synchronisation in houses, hospitals, factories and city-centres, from London and Paris to Brno and Russia.

Precision timekeeping

In contrast to ‘everyday’ clocks, astronomical regulators are precision instruments intended for laboratories or observatories. The Clockworks has major examples by makers including Matthias Hipp, John Godman, W. H. Shortt, and Feodosii Fedchenko, and the firms of L. Leroy, Etalon, Brillié, and Zenith.

Designers and innovators

The development of synchronised time in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was partly due to the efforts of pioneering electric clock companies, and their designers and engineers. At The Clockworks, the English firms of Synchronome and Gent are particularly well represented by a range of timekeepers that chart their periods of experimentation, as well as their innovations.

Though The Clockworks primarily focuses on horology, the collection also includes significant examples of related networked technologies, including fire alarms and electric telegraphs.