The History of The Carriage Clock
In this article we look at the history of carriage clocks and their evolution.
This article is part of a series of article we’re doing to look at the history & development of the carriage clock.
Before Carriage Clocks
The earliest clocks, that we would today identify as a clock, were driven by weights. This meant clocks were usually heavy and importantly couldn’t be moved. Pendulum driven clocks would have to be ‘levelled’ and set up to run where they were to be kept.
The development of travelling clocks and watches was only capable due to two inventions, the mainspring and the balance wheel.
The balance wheel, though not always a wheel sometime a weighted double ended bar, has it origins in the 13th century. Unlike a pendulum whose weight hangs beneath the pivot point of the escapement, the balance wheel has the weight evenly spread around pivot point, meaning it runs in any orientation.
No one knows who or when the mainspring was invented. Likely it was discovered in different parts of the world at around the same time. Leonardo da Vinci drew the design of one in a notebook, and the prevailing theory is that it was invented in Northern Italy in the late 15th century.
Only when these two inventions are combined do we start to see ‘travelling clocks’ begin to be made across Europe.
The First Carriage Clocks
The credit for the first French carriage clock goes to Abraham-Louis Breguet, though the evolution from travelling clock to carriage clock was set in motion a couple of centuries before his birth. His first pendules de voyage is believed to have been sold in 1810.
As with anything bearing the Breguet name at the time, these were hugely complex and well executed clocks, that now find themselves fetching hefty sums at auction and sitting in museums around the world.
Breguet’s clocks were handmade masterpieces.
It was twenty years later in 1830 when the first production carriage clocks began to be made. Made by Paul Garnier, these clocks begin to take on the style and the design that these days we would instantly recognise as a carriage clock.
Production would ramp up across France and in 1867 its estimated a quarter of a million carriage clocks were passing through the Parisian clock industry a year, a figure that likely grew going into the last quarter of the 19th century.
Mass-Production
The last quarter of the century saw carriage clock production reach its peak. At this time carriage clocks were being shipped around the world. England was the biggest importer of carriage clocks, but the author has in his collection a carriage clock retailed in Madras, India circa 1880.
The Decline
The industry remained buoyant until the first world war, where production drops off, and further drops off during the second world war. They were still made but on a smaller scale.
The heyday for the carriage clock was over.
No doubt advancements in manufacturing, which led to the mass production of pocket watches and wristwatches, and the travel clocks of the 1920s which folded up into cases played a slight part in their decline. But for a long time carriage clocks hadn’t been used as originally intended and were much less ‘travel clock’ as a subcategory of the mantel clock.
Present Day
Now carriage clocks, as before, are owned due to their beauty and the history, often connecting its current owners with family members no longer here. There are a number of manufactures still producing carriage clocks but the number is low.
Rarely, if ever, are carriage clocks used in there original function, to tell the time on the move.
Here at the Carriage Clock Company we specialise in the repair and restoration of carriage clocks, both antique and modern, and can undertake repairs ranging from services through to full restoration, along with case and dial repairs. If you have a carriage clock you would like repaired, please click here to be taken through to our ‘Book A Repair’ page.