The Unremarkable Battery Operated Wall Clock

Rick Sanford, of Boscobel, WI, created and donated this exhibit.

Alexander Bain of Scotland is generally credited with the first electrically impulsed pendulum clock around 1839-40. He is often referred to as the "father of electric horology". On January 11, 1841, Alexander Bain along with John Barwise, a chronometer maker, took out another important patent describing a clock in which an electromagnetic pendulum and an electric current is employed to keep the clock going instead of springs or weights.

Later patents expanded on his original ideas.