Charles Hillinger’s America : Timepieces Make This Museum Tick

“What time is it?” Joseph Malkevitch called across the room to his wife, Nina.

A dozen people turned around and laughed. It did seem like an odd question at the National Assn. of Watch and Clock Collectors Museum.

“There are 10,000 clocks and watches in this museum and you’re asking me the time?” said Nina Malkevitch with a laugh.

“But none of the clocks and watches have the same time,” replied her husband with a sigh.

Malkevitch was right. None of the timepieces in the exhibit had the same time. They weren’t even running. “It would take forever to keep winding them all,” explained Pat Tomes, 36, the museum curator.

“Say, dad,” piped up 7 1/2-year-old Benjamin Malkevitch. “Why did the boy throw the clock out the window?” “Why?” asked the boy’s father. “To see time fly,” replied the youngster.

Four centuries of timekeeping devices are on display at the remarkable museum in this small town.

“We have more than 10,000 clocks and watches and more information on timepieces than in any other place in America,” noted Tomes. “The Smithsonian, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Getty Museum all have excellent clock and watch collections, but none of them are nearly as large or as comprehensive as what we have.”

On exhibit are clocks and watches from around the world, timepieces from the 1600s and 1700s, tower clocks, grandfather clocks, tall clocks, German musical clocks, American railroad watches, Chinese and Japanese wristwatches, wristwatches of all kinds, novelty watches and clocks.

Both the time museum and headquarters of the National Assn. of Watch and Clock Collectors (NAWCC) are in the same building. Founded in 1943, the association now has more than 34,000 members, more than ever before.

“There has been a recent resurgence in interest in watches and clocks,” said Tom Bartels, 40, an association member for 26 years and executive director of NAWCC and the NAWCC Museum.

NAWCC has 142 chapters in 43 states, Australia, England and Japan. In urban areas with heavy concentration of members the chapters hold monthly meetings. More than 10% of the NAWCC members live in California where there are 19 chapters. The next biggest states are New York with nine chapters and Ohio and Florida each with seven.

The bimonthly NAWCC Bulletin is filled with feature stories about clocks and watches. The most recent issue, for example, had articles on Black Forest clocks, back-yard sundials, gravity drive in large clocks and the ill-fated McIntyre Watch Co. of Kankakee, Ill., which lasted only from 1908-10.

News from various chapters is included in each issue of the Bulletin. Some recent California items:

Larry Allen displayed two beating heart clocks at a recent meeting of the San Fernando Valley chapter.

The Rev. Robert Galstel, pastor of the Church of the Angels in Pasadena, thanked members of the Santa Anita chapter for restoring the church’s tower clock that was severely damaged in an earthquake.

Carl Manthei of Fairfield gave a program at the San Francisco chapter about grandfather clock radios produced only in 1931. Their manufacturing was short-lived, said Manthei, due to the lack of sales during the height of the Great Depression.

The late Mel Blanc of movie cartoon fame was an active member of NAWCC. He chaired the committee to raise funds for the organization’s museum that opened in 1977.

Members from across the nation come to the NAWCC headquarters to enroll in weeklong classes dealing with the repair of clocks. NAWCC also sponsors a three-day seminar every year on horology, the science of timekeeping. This year’s seminar on public timekeeping will be held Oct. 26-28 in the nation’s capital.

The association’s conservator, John Metcalfe, 34, spent the past several months putting back together the famous 11-foot high, 9-foot wide Stephen D. Engle monumental clock that has been in storage for 50 years. It’s the first and oldest of half a dozen monumental clocks in America.

The Engle clock, now a part of the NAWCC collection, has 48 moving figures, including Christ and the 12 apostles, Molly Pitcher and a group of Revolutionary soldiers, a mechanical fife playing patriotic airs, a tidal dial, a lunar dial, and hourly, daily, yearly movements of planets with the relative position to the sun, Earth and each other.

Originally completed in 1876, the Engle clock was called the eighth wonder of the world, and was exhibited in amusement parks throughout the U.S. from 1877 to 1940.

A large map of the United States in the museum shows the location of 42 major watch producers that existed at one time in this country. They are now all out of business. All watches for sale now in America are manufactured overseas. Even clock companies moved overseas.

Behind glass nearby was an 1898 Sidney Advertising Clock, made in New York. At the bottom of the tall clock were three drums, each displaying a foot-high advertising card that changed every five minutes.

Some of the time machines in the NAWCC museum are pretty far out.