By the mid-1700s, the population of Britain was growing and the start of the Industrial Revolution was pushing more and more working age people towards urban centres to gain a living in industry. Consequently, crime (and fear of crime) was increasing and with it the demand for watchmen – the modern security officer’s great-great-great-great grandfather. Before police forces, many communities had teams of organised watchmen to ensure public order, security and safety. Watchmen typically operated at night and were tasked with conducting patrols around villages, towns or private premises, to deter, detect and report on crime and suspicious activity, as well as fire outbreaks.
Trust and consistency are paramount in the security profession. As lowly-paid night watchmen often operated alone or without close supervision, their effectiveness and professionalism varied person to person, and some were more trustworthy than others. While clocks have been used by watchmen since at least the mid-15th century,[1] the desire to hold watchmen to account, improve the consistency of night patrols, and provide assurance to customers, led to the development of the first types of purpose-made watch-clock in the late-1700s in Germany and England.[2] Boulton & Watt and Samuel Day were amongst the earliest makers of these clocks in Britain, with the latter having submitted the first (disputed) patent for the first ‘watchman’s noctuary’ in 1803. Leading European clockmakers, such as Edward John Dent and John Whitehurst III in Britain, and Abraham Newman in the USA, went on to develop their own types and improve upon Day’s version. Static watch-clocks were installed in the protected premises and watchmen had to regularly manually depress a lever or insert a key to record their patrol rounds on the clocks (e.g. at the start and end of the patrol route).
The concept of the portable watch-clock emerged in the early-1800s, with German inventor and entrepreneur Johannes Bürk generally credited with patenting the first of this type of device in 1849, with mass production of Nachtwächter-Kontrolluhren (Nightwatchmen Control Clocks) starting in 1855. Bürk’s German-made watch-clocks were highly successful, being exported across Europe and North America by the late-1860s until the 1980s. In England, such devices became known as ‘tell-tale’ clocks and were made by a number of different clockmakers, including Dent and Whitehurst.
Portable watch-clocks combined a mechanical clock with a simple recording mechanism whereby the watchman inserted a key at designated ‘stations’ or checkpoints, stamping a time‑coded mark onto a paper strip inside the watch-clock. The resulting log proved that the watchman had checked each point at the prescribed hour, thereby deterring negligence and providing evidence in case of security incident.
By the end of the 19th century, the United States had one of the fastest growing economies and budding security and insurance industries. Consequently, there was a large demand for watch-clocks and by the turn of the century various watch-clock manufacturers had emerged to compete with German imports. One of these companies was the Newman Clock Company, which following a large merger in 1923 became the Detex Watchclock Corporation.[3] Detex went on to dominate the North American watch-clock sector for the next 80 years and is still in business today.
Watch-clocks were reliable and simple for watchmen to use, and straightforward for the supervisor or controller to check afterwards. They worked with a simple, accurate mechanism that was easy to maintain and was said to have been serviceable by any clockmaker. Additionally, they were small and portable for carrying on duty, and had a sufficiently robust construction and weather-resistant housing, although they were usually issued in a leather pouch with carrying straps. They were however not invulnerable to tampering using counterfeit keys, and were expensive: in the 1870s they cost around $2,000 per piece in today’s money, though this price fluctuated over time.
Watch-clocks were used throughout the second half of the 19th century and during most of the 20th century. However, the technology within the metal cases continued to be improved upon. Paper strips were replaced with cardboard disks, disks replaced with tape, mechanical timepieces replaced with quartz timepieces, and anti-counterfeiting features incorporated.
From the late 1980s onwards, security firms began to replace watch-clocks with electronic alternatives. Today, many modern security companies issue their security patrol officers with smartphones or electronic key fobs, which they use to scan small RFID ‘tags’ at specific locations that the security officer is required to check during their rounds. These essentially achieve the same purpose as those of 150 years’ ago, though with improved efficiency and data portability.
[1] https://www.hmb.ch/en/museums/objects-in-the-collection/details/s/weight-driven-wall-clock/
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