It's About Time!

What exists everywhere in the universe,

but occupies no space?

What can be measured - 

but not seen, heard, smelled, tasted,

nor held in our hands?

What can be saved, spent, frittered away or killed - 

but never destroyed?

We had to pick our truck up from servicing today, so we looked for a short outing to enjoy before lunch and picking up the truck.  We decided that a visit to the National Watch & Clock Museum, in nearby Columbia, Pennsylvania, might be just the right thing.  We got much more than we expected.

Columbia, the town where the museum is located, was originally known as Wright's Ferry because it was the site of one of the original ferries across the Susquehanna River.  In the 1800's, Pennsylvania constructed a canal at this location to bypass rapids in the Susquehanna, making the river navigable its entire length down to the Chesapeake Bay.  Columbia was a lively industrial town through the 1800's, and most of its buildings downtown date from the Civil War era and the Victorian period. While the town could be more prosperous, it seems clean and its numerous 1800's-era homes and buildings have great potential.

As we arrived at the Clock Museum, which is maintained by the National Association of Watch  & Clock Collectors, we were greeted by this large belltower, which was chiming the noon hour:

The museum itself is located in this impressive building:

It's hard to overstate the breadth of the museum's collection.  As you enter the exhibits, you are taken through a "Tunnel of Time" showing, briefly, the development of clocks and timekeeping from prehistoric to modern times. Here is one of the displays depicting the era of construction of large European clock towers:

Once through the Tunnel of Time, we were introduced to Stonehenge, which, like many other neolithic sites, was used at least in part for the purpose of determining and recording time and the passing of the seasons of the year:

A highlight of our visit was this large "Monumental Clock," which was built by Stephen Decatur Engle, a clockmaker from Hazleton, Pennsylvania:

The Engle Monumental Clock was the first known monumental clock made in the United States. It took Engle 20 years to complete the clock which was finished in 1878. The clock toured throughout the Eastern United States for 70 years before disappearing in 1951.  It was subsequently rediscovered in a Connecticut barn, in very poor condition, transported to the Clock Museum and carefully restored before being put on permanent display in the museum.  The Engle Monumental Clock measures 11' high, 8' wide, and 3' deep and contains three towers. Among its mechanical features are two organ movements and 48 moving figures. The clock also indicates the day of the week, current month, the phase of the moon, and even the current tides. On the hour, a skeleton representing Death strikes a bone against a skull attached to the column of the clock. At 15, 30, and 45 minutes past the hour, Father Time strikes a bell with a scythe and turns his sandglass while the central figures of Youth, Middle Age, and Old Age revolve in the arch above the clock dial. At 40 minutes past the hour, a group of revolutionary soldiers appear from the clock while a barrel organ plays "patriotic tunes". At 55 minutes past the hour, Jesus Christ and the three Marys come out of the center tower as a procession of the Apostles takes place accompanied by hymns.

You have to see it to believe it.

The museum has many rooms, each displaying clocks from various parts of the worlds or eras of the development of timepieces.  The study of clocks and timepieces is known as "horology," and you can be assured you will be surrounded by horology in this museum.

Here is a display of machines that were used to manufacture tiny screws for making pocket watches:

This is but one of many displays of tall clocks, colloquially known in the U.S. as "grandfather clocks."

You might be interested in knowing how they came to be called grandfather clocks.  In 1876, Henry C. Work composed a song called, "My Grandfather's Clock".  The lyrics may be familiar:

My grandfather's clock was too large for the shelf,

So it stood ninety years on the floor;

It was taller by half than the old man himself,

Though it weighed not a pennyweight more.

It was bought on the morn of the day that he was born,

And was always his treasure and pride;

But it stopped short — never to go again —

When the old man died.

The song became so popular that these tall clocks began to be called "grandfather clocks" throughout the country...and so they are called today.

And what self-respecting clock museum can be without a cuckoo clock?  Here is a doozy - it was made around 1890 in Germany.  It is build from carved walnut with a hunting motif - common to many cuckoo clocks. A large deer head with glass eyes sits on top of clock. The dial is encircled by hunting horn. Carved rabbit and pheasant are mounted on either side. An ammunition pouch hangs from the horn and from the pouch hang two dead birds. Oak leaves motifs are carved throughout.

Other displays include novelty clocks.  Characters such as Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker, Orphan Annie, Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Gene Autry, Dick Tracy, Superman, and Captain Marvel all found their way onto watches or clock dials, as did many other figures, both fictional and real. The most famous character timepiece, the Mickey Mouse watch introduced by the Ingersoll-Waterbury Company in 1933, was so popular that it saved its struggling manufacture from bankruptcy. Novelty clocks still flourish today, as manufacturers continue to create timepieces featuring characters from the latest movies and cartoons.

Another special display includes James Bond watches.  With a continuous history dating back to the early 1950s, Agent 007 is an ideal center for a collection that includes several different brands, first-of-a-kind technologies, and an examination of the style trends that often define who we are by what we wear. Gadgets aside, these timekeepers also make for fantastic storytelling. Consistently, they pit hero against the most unrelenting adversary of all: The clock, fate of the world hanging on mere seconds left before mission success. James Bond watches are invariably at the center of Ian Fleming’s original literary thrillers, continuing today in the James Bond movies.

We spent nearly three hours in the museum, and were so interested in the exhibits that we forgot to watch the introductory film.  Had we watched that and spent a little more time looking at exhibits we skipped over, we could easily have spent four hours or more.  You can see that, while it might seem like a "flighty" subject, the Clock Museum is definitely worth your "time."

P.S. - And that's the answer to the riddle above.