National Watch and Clock Museum

From the Latest Issue of Our Newsletter

This Month in Horological History

March 8, 1904

On this day, George Steele Tiffany received US patent numbers 754397 for an electric clock and 754398 for a temperature-compensating torsion pendulum. The invention was conceived as one electric clock but applied for as two separate patents. Tiffany set up the Tiffany Electric Manufacturing Co. in 1907 to produce the Tiffany Electric Clocks, which were marketed directly to jewelers. The clocks were simply presented as electric clocks with no springs, no weights, no cleaning, and no oiling. Tiffany did not market the clocks as “Never-Wind” until the company moved to Buffalo, NY, in 1911 and then later changed its name to the Tiffany Never-Wind Clock Co. in 1917. The new name was a marketing scheme in itself, since many Americans had fears about the new power source. Advertisements of the day called the Tiffany Never-Wind Clock “the first fundamental advance in time keeping in 300 years” that eliminated the “nuisance of clock winding.”

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