100 Objects #15: Bundy Clock

99% Invisible

This episode of '99% Invisible' explores the invention of the Bundy Clock—the first employee time clock—created by Willard Bundy in 1888. Or

Key takeaways

The Bundy Clock was invented not for profit but out of a passion for precision and order.
It transformed time from a subjective experience into an objective, measurable metric in the workplace.

Main topics

History of timekeeping in America
Invention of the employee time clock

Notable quotes

If you can imagine it, there was a time before time.

The clock calls you to work. You still had to show up to the factory whenever the boss rang the bell.

Conclusion

The Bundy Clock, born from a craftsman's love of precision, became a symbol of industrial

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) If you can imagine it, there was a time before time. Speaker 3 (0:05) Well, before clock time, that is. In fact, there were many decades in colonial America when most people had no earthly idea what time it was. Speaker 4 (0:15) Most people, when they keep time, they just stick a stick in the ground and call it noon. They look for the shadows. Speaker 3 (0:22) This is Michael Malley, a historian of time. Speaker 4 (0:26) What are you going to do when it's cloudy? Well, there's animal cues. You Speaker 3 (0:29) woke up with the rooster and at the end of the day. Speaker 4 (0:32) There's a phrase in American vernacular culture, till the cows come home. Well, the thing is, cows do go back to the barn at a certain time of day. So they could look outside and see the cows heading home, and they would know it was time for them to go home. Speaker 3 (0:46) In the 1650s, the first public clocks were installed in Boston, Salem, and New York. And they were all the rage. Speaker 4 (0:55) New England towns would try to get a clock, and it was a sign of their kind of legitimacy. It would be used to call people to prayer or, you know, call people to church or call the meeting. And with Speaker 3 (1:05) this clock tower, suddenly the clock was the center of everything. Speaker 4 (1:09) Being in earshot of the town bells marked the borders of civilization. If you were out of earshot of the town, you were almost in the wilderness. Speaker 3 (1:19) Life was becoming organized by the clock. But for the next 100 years, that clock said something different in every city. Noon was one thing in Boston, another in Providence, a third in New York. Fine for a farmer, a nightmare for a railroad running on a schedule. So in 1883, the railroad barons got together and tamed this chaos, carving the country into four standard time zones. But for the average American worker, That didn't mean much, especially when your employer could still decide what time it was. Speaker 4 (1:55) The clock calls Speaker 3 (1:56) you to work. You still had to show up to the factory whenever the boss rang the bell. Speaker 4 (2:01) But people don't trust that because they feel like it's always being bumped ahead, you know, to get people in early. Speaker 3 (2:07) Everyone knew the foreman messed with the time to get more work out of you. Speaker 4 (2:11) They could change it. They could make it ahead in the morning and behind in the afternoon, right? They could change it. That's the issue. So you never know if that clock is accurate. Speaker 3 (2:20) And once you got inside... A human being was often the one deciding whether you were actually on time. Speaker 4 (2:26) So if you know Joe, the guy checking you in, if he's your buddy, you're going to say, come on, Joe, give me a break. And he's going to mark you as on time when you're not. Or, you know, conversely, if Joe is the tool of management and eager to punish people he doesn't like, he can mark you as late when you're not. Speaker 3 (2:46) Everybody, employees and employers alike, thought this messiness of time was being used to cheat them. And into this mess walked an unlikely hero, a man who didn't care much about the factory or power or money. He just cared about clocks. But the clock he built would do more than solve a workplace dispute. It would reorder America's relationship to time itself. Speaker 3 (3:15) From 99 % Invisible and BBC Studios, this is a history of the United States in 100 Objects. I'm Roman Mars. Today, the Bundy Clock and how the first employee time clock sparked a revolution in workplace surveillance and efficiency. Reporter Ellie Lightfoot has the story. Speaker 1 (3:39) The name of our unlikely hero, this man who would unwittingly change our relationship to time, he's called Willard Bundy. Willard was born in 1845 and grew up in Auburn, New York, a small but booming factory town in the center of the state. As a boy, he was kind of an engineering whiz kid. Speaker 2 (3:57) He liked tinkering with things. He built little toys. Speaker 1 (4:01) This is Tom Pizek. He works at the Bundy Museum, which, as you can imagine, is all about Willard Bundy. As Speaker 2 (4:07) a child, he would, like, take apart watches and try to reassemble them. Speaker 1 (4:13) Willard grew up to become a professional watch tinkerer, a jeweler. Because back then, jewelers weren't just jewelers. They were the town's authority on time. It was their responsibility to build these big, accurate clocks and keep them on display in their shop window so that people could visit the window and see what time it was. And it was this part of the job that Willard loved the most. He'd spend hours and hours constructing these intricate novelty clocks, like this hulking eight-foot-tall clock that he claimed could keep perfect time for a thousand years. It Speaker 2 (4:46) had dials for not only hours, minutes, and seconds, but also the... day of the week, the date of the month, which particular month it was, and the year for 1,000 years. Speaker 1 (5:02) But this clock, which, by the way, he called the Wonderful Clock, wasn't just for telling time. Speaker 2 (5:07) It had bells and whistles that would chime on the hour, every hour. Speaker 1 (5:13) The thing was essentially a cuckoo clock on steroids. But instead of a bird popping out, Willard constructed this elaborate scene, a kind of mechanical diorama of a working mill. I Speaker 2 (5:23) think it's a lumber mill, actually. So the waterfall is transporting little logs to be cut. Speaker 1 (5:30) There was also a tiny pond with frogs and turtles and fish of every kind. There was a mini steam engine and a boat bobbing in the pond. This Speaker 2 (5:40) clock was so popular, such an oddity, that there actually had to be a police officer out front just kind of keeping the crowd moving along. Because people were so enchanted by it that they would just loiter in front of his store. Speaker 1 (5:56) Willard had wrangled over 3,000 tiny pieces into a kind of masterpiece, which, to me at least, tells me that the man loved order. So it's not surprising, really, that he saw the messiness of timekeeping happening in factories across America as a giant problem he needed to solve. The story goes that one day, Willard walked into a factory in his town and saw how the bosses were keeping track of their employees' time. They assigned each worker one of these little brass discs and expected them to toss it into a bucket every morning to mark themselves present. But the system was a mess. It was sloppy. There was no accurate record of when the guy actually showed up. And Willard, he couldn't help himself. Speaker 2 (6:37) He saw a system that existed, but it wasn't up to snuff. Speaker 1 (6:42) So back in his shop, Willard started building something that was up to snuff. And in 1888, he patented it. The first employee time clock. The Bundy clock. It was basically an ornate wooden box mounted on the wall, kind of like a grandfather clock. Except underneath the clock face, there was a little slot for a key. Each worker got their own key. And every morning when they showed up to work, they'd insert their key into the slot, turn it a quarter turn, which would then stamp the exact time they got there onto a ribbon of paper. But after he patented it, Willard wasn't really that into the idea of selling it. Speaker 2 (7:17) Willard was content to stay in his lane, I guess. You know, he wanted to make these very specific objects that brought him joy. He wasn't necessarily looking to get rich. He wasn't trying to redefine the system. Speaker 1 (7:33) Maybe Willard wasn't trying to get rich, but his brother was. Speaker 1 (7:40) Willard's younger brother, Harlow, is going to play a huge role in the story of the Bundy Clock. But Harlow wants things Willard doesn't. In fact, the Bundy brothers couldn't have been more different. And it's clear our museum man has a favorite. Speaker 2 (7:55) Everything that we know about Willard tells us that he was a genuinely nice guy. He was well-liked in the community. His younger brother, Harlow, was the complete opposite. He was rude. He was curt. He was a jerk. Speaker 1 (8:11) While Willard, the inventor, was a softie. Speaker 2 (8:14) Supposedly, he was just like the most romantic man that you could think of. Speaker 1 (8:18) Harlow was not. Speaker 2 (8:20) He had a very poor reputation throughout town. Speaker 1 (8:23) Willard was more than happy to spend 20 years making a single clock. But Harlow, the brother with the business mind, saw the dollar signs almost immediately. Speaker 2 (8:31) He was aware of what his brother was inventing. He said, hey, if we market these clocks, they're going to sell like hotcakes. Speaker 1 (8:41) Eventually, Harlow convinces his inventor brother to go into business with him. But the Bundy clocks do not immediately sell. Like hotcakes. Speaker 2 (8:51) A lot of business owners didn't necessarily see the need for a time clock like this. Speaker 1 (8:58) Plus, this clock was expensive. Speaker 2 (9:01) A Bundy clock was $75, which I want to say that calculates to about $1,500 to $2,000. Speaker 1 (9:10) The other problem was that for the first year, they tried to market these clocks directly to workers. They would take out ads in union magazines or newspapers in factory towns that would read, Hey Speaker 2 (9:21) factory worker, make sure your boss is paying you