Old World Questions And New World Answers

f the wheels were first described by a pair of compasses and then cut out with a handsaw, while, aside from a few pivots and fastenings, there was not a piece of metal in the old Yankee clocks. For a good many years, Terry sold his clock movements for five pounds apiece and these were cased by the local joiner whenever the farmer or trader brought one home to his family and village. That is why the upright clocks of a hundred years ago have so much character about them and the true reason of their popularity among persons of good taste. In 1807, Terry commenced making wooden clocks by machinery and, about the same time, Riley Whiting, another Connecticut man, started a wooden-clock factory at Winsted, a few miles from Waterbury. He introduced a great many improvements in the manufacture and finally became the most important clockmaker of his day in America. Meanwhile, competition had already reduced the price of wooden movements from five pounds to twenty shillings, when a certain Chauncey Jerome suddenly revolutionized Clockland, by the introduction of a clock made entirely of brass. The framework and wheels of this time-piece were punched out of sheet metal and its spindles turned in automatic lathes, the effect of this change in the common practice being to reduce the cost of a clock movement to about two shillings and theprice of cased clocks to eight or ten shillings apiece. A first consignment of Connecticut clocks was sent to England in 1842 and, since...