The American Clock & Watch Museum

The American Clock & Watch Museum in Bristol, Conn. is yet another museum we never found time (heh, heh) to visit when we lived nearby, but made time for a stop as tourists passing through.

I admit it didn’t sound very exciting on paper, but seeing the clocks presented as art objects was more interesting than I thought it would be.

Many of the pieces on display showed incredible craftsmanship.

A globe clock, which I still didn’t understand even after reading the explanatory card. Circa 1883.

“Horology” is the study and measurement of time and the art of making clocks and watches. The ACWM is one of a very few (and the first!) museums dedicated to it in the US.

The museum opened in 1954 and now has more than 6,000 clocks, watches, and timepieces on display over several galleries in 10,000 square feet of exhibit space.

The focus is on American clocks, but there are international pieces, as well.

Dickory, Dickory, Dock clocks, circa 1911 (left) and 1920. Do you see that there is a mouse that climbs up and tells the time?! In accordance with the nursery rhyme, the mouse falls back to the start at one.

Bristol, Conn., was the clock-making capital of the world back in the day, with over 275 business related to clock-making. By 1844 it was the world leader in affordable timepieces. Who knew?

In the early 19^th century, Eli Terry pioneered manufacturing techniques that moved production from handmade parts that needed adjustments when being assembled to mass-production of machine-made interchangeable parts that needed no adjustments.

One unexpected highlight of our visit was the soothing sounds of clocks ticking as we strolled through, especially in the room with all the grandfather clocks. Once a week, a cadre of volunteers known as “old cranks” work their way through all the galleries hand winding all the timepieces.

If you’re there on the hour you can hear many chimes ringing at once.

The gift shop had several fun books for purchase, such as Chime and Punishment and Clock and Dagger, both by Julianne Holmes, but we wanted to give a special shout out to The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore. It’s the heartbreaking story of the women who hand-painted glow-in-the-dark watch faces with radium in the early 20th century, and the subsequent cancers and other disastrous health effects that ensued. Doug and I both read the book and found it gripping.