Faithful reproduction of the IBM Wall Clock

Kevin Kidney says: "Our brilliant friends at Schoolhouse Electric in Portland have partnered with IBM to reproduce their iconic 1960s standard issue wall clock. It takes me back to childhood, and late afternoons anticipating school to be let out as that thin red second hand ran circles behind the domed glass."

The IBM Wall Clock

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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CLamb

I have memories of how the clocks sometimes malfunctioned spinning the minute hand around at second hand speeds. It always delighted the class.
- jackbird
  
  That wasn’t a malfunction, it was a signal sent out to all the clocks in the building to synchronize them.
  
  http://www.ats-usa.com/pdf_apnotes/MCMODES.pdf for the gory details.
  - Donald Petersen
    
    Ah. That also explains a couple of clocks I had in certain high school classrooms which would stop their second hands at ten seconds before the hour, tick those last seconds off one by one, pause again, then resume their smooth rotation. It was a correction signal.
    
    There’s another 25-year-old mystery put to bed!
http://www.facebook.com/people/Doug-Lucchetti/1132787135 Doug Lucchetti

As familiar as the IBM clock was, even more evocative and fondly remembered were the ubiquitous horizontal framed image of the single word THINK, beneath which would be the three words: International Business Machines.
http://www.matthewpetty.com/ Matthew Petty

Looks great. I’m pretty sure there was a similar institutional clock in the UK when I was a kid.
One question though – was the movement made in the USA?
- scruss
  
  Probably a “Gents of Leicester” wall clock. Similar shape.
  - http://www.matthewpetty.com/ Matthew Petty
    
    *google image search* oooooooooooo yes
- theophrastvs
  
  movement is “quartz” so… China, i’d say.
  
  the classroom clock i recall was very similar however the second hand moved in analog fashion; synchronous motor, no doubt. whereas this one snaps the second hand per second in modern fashion. so it’s only historically accurate to that degree.
  - http://www.matthewpetty.com/ Matthew Petty
    
    Still a very nice object.
CourierPica

$235 puts a high price on nostalgia…
- http://twitter.com/digitalArtform Joseph Francis
  
  I got a great one on eBay for less than $100 – not a reproduction – A Simplex. Battery powered.
Jeff Grygny

Haha as classy as this retro-dial is, I can’t help but think of Russian nostalgia for the Soviet era totalitarianism. There couldn’t be a better visual analog (pun not intended) for the relentless thrust of Taylorian tyrrany of industrial time than this.
Of course, I used to have horrifying nightmares of a giant clock.
- http://www.matthewpetty.com/ Matthew Petty
  
  “Isn’t it obvious? You can time him, know exactly how long it takes him to do something.”
  “Well?”
  “Then you can make him do it faster.”
  JG Ballard, ‘Chronopolis’ (in which clocks have been outlawed)
EH

You may also be familiar with the clocks made by Chicago Lighthouse:

http://chicagolighthouse.org/programs-and-services/12-3/4%E2%80%9D-slimline-series/electric
http://brennannovak.com/ brennannovak

Man, this is funny I was just at Schoolhouse two days ago and I saw this clock. A weird case of real world accessibility beating online!
imachias

It’s a shame that IBM sold their time division to Simplex in 1958 and therefore never made clocks in the 60s. Pretty awesome reproduction, though.
- http://twitter.com/digitalArtform Joseph Francis
  
  I have a Simplex. I like how the minute hand makes tiny ticks along with the second hand and you can see it move.
http://hame.ca/one/ Hamish Grant

There is something mesmerizing about the IBM wall clock. When I was in school, these were a universal feature – every classroom, every hallway, every gymnasium had them.. they seemed to be networked, too – as when daylight savings time arrived or ended, the clock would be adjusted forward (never backward) one click-clock at a time until the proper time was displayed. Much has been made of the slight back-click the minute hand would make if you were clockwatching before recess or lunch or the end of school. It was as if time stood still for a moment, in spite of the youngsters whose desire to vault from their seats and riot out of the school building at the exact moment leaving-time was achieved.
- addalled
  
  I think the back-tick thing was in a scene in Risky Business when Tom Cruise was anxious to get out of class.
Paul Renault

You would think that, for the purpose of making a video, they would have lined up the hands to that they all meed at exactly noon, rather ‘kinda’ noon.
http://twitter.com/AwesomeRobot AwesomeRobot

Made in USA. $235.
Antinous / Moderator

That clock looks lonely.
- Donald Petersen
  
  Dear God…
http://profiles.google.com/westcarleton Ray Perkins

How many kids today can’t read an analog clock? (Many years ago, an employee of my wife’s at Amex couldn’t, so I assume the number > 0).
Palomino

235!!? I wonder how much the Master Clock is. This clock can be in style and finish only, nothing else. The ones seen throughout an entire school or government building were all slave clocks, all hard wired to a master clock.