We are looking for any Westclox photographs, memorabilia etc between 1927- 1980s of the factory. When did clocks stop using radium? A well-dressed, steady and punctual chap, up to the minute and always on the job., Big Ben always comes to you straight from home, LaSalle, Illinois, read another. Advertisement: Illustrates crackle green Tiny Tim, crackle blue Big Ben and crackle pink Baby Ben clocks. Some people just want one or two that they remember from childhood in good condition, so thats just the thing for them. Sometimes Ive seen them for 300 to 600 dollars. I recently wrote an article on Hong Kong Watch and Clockmakers for the Antiquarian Horology Society Journal. I wonder if the younger generations are as interested in the older things as we are, although there are some younger collectors out there learning how to do clock repair. A 2015 article by Ben Hohenstatt in the Illinois Valleys News Tribune included interviews with a few former Westclox workers who returned to see the museum and remember old times. When did Junghans stop manufacturing Westminster Chimes, and when did Keinzle stop manufacturing Westminster chimes. These folks here that are responsible for this are doing a marvelous job, Ristau said. It looks like you mount it to the wall. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that watches with radium dials should not be taken apart[5] without proper training, technique, and facilities. the knobs have foreign words ie wecker & UHR.would like to know about his clock Dave, Your question about a Big Ben containing radium, and in fact about which clocks actually do contain radium, is a good one. Thanks for any info you may be able to supply However, there`s no easy way for you to tell; there were no labeling requirements then as we have now. I have looked high and low in my attempts to find out how any of these resproduction style 1A were produced. I have purchased 1) Style 1 Baby and Big Ben with the Gold Leaf dial (seller stated raised letters); and, 2) a Style 1 Baby Ben with Baby Ben De Luxe on the dial. Based in Flora, Indiana, Bill can be reached via his website, clockhistory.com, which is a member of our Hall of Fame. I have never seen this mentioned anywhere. when did westclox stop using radium; when did westclox stop using radium. Gary Biolchini added more style series in his book Never underestimate the value of an alarm clock when yours broke two years ago and nobody has manufactured a new one since. It is 3 diameter with Westclox on the back and PAT.APLOFOR. Ive recently acquired a New Haven decorative wall clock. Purchased from a man who claimed to have salvaged them from the backroom of an unnamed Chicago watch repair shop, each round and weathered face represents the lasting work of an international manufacturing giant at the peak of its powers. At the end of one hand is a star and the other hand is the moon. Thanks, I have come across a mantle clock that has been in my husbands family for as long as he can remember He estimates his bother purchased the clock around 1950. When did they stop using radium on clocks? Some years ago I intended to do a write-up on my collection and started researching on the internet and found the Westclox history site with a wealth of info. The thing I remember most is working with the people, Ristau said. Richard Tjarks introduced After the discovery of radioactivity in 1896 by French physicist and Nobel Prize winner, Antoine Henri Becquerel, many other scientists began to search for uses of radioactivity. Their factory in LaSalle, Illinois closed down in about 1980 when they moved all their production down south, but the building is still there. Radium dials held near the face have been shown to produce radiation doses in excess of 10Sv / hour. It can be found with some other clocks in a case in the second floor hallway. Quite a few who try to get every basic model, but fewer who get into the rarer models and do research. That batch was in production non-continuously from 1939 to 1946, housed in gunmetal cases with nickel trim. As the 1960s began, over 50 million Big Ben clocks had been produced in total, and additional Westclox plants were now in operation everywhere from Athens, Georgia, and Ontario, Canada, to Scotland and Australia. Can you confirm? It was passed on to my sister and for years it was on their mantle along time until it stopped. That was the first antique clock I owned myself. The center is in the shape of the world map. They asked me to give some programs myself at some of the chapter meetings so I became a little bit better at being a public speaker, and its been great meeting people. In a way theyre preventing clocks from being thrown away so I cant totally condemn it, but it still seems like a funny thing to do. I cant find out anything about him or any other clocks by him. While promoting Westclox products in Europe, the breakout of World War I and the laws of mandatory military service in his native France forced Le Roy to get his affairs in order and head for the front in 1914. Radium paint itself was eventually phased out and has not been used in watches since 1968. I have a Westclox Big Ben 1910 style 1a and have not been able to find out the present value/worth. Your email (will not be published) (required), The Timeless Appeal of the Westclock Big and BabyBens, The National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors, Not Your Grandmas Cuckoo: Decapitating, Rat-Eating Clocks of the Black Forest, The Care and Repair of 19th-Century American Clocks. From that time on, Baby Bens first and then Big Bens were available with either the plain or luminous dial. The style 8 Big and Baby Bens were introduced in 1964. The Ingersoll Watch division of the Waterbury Clock Company, a nationally-known maker of low-cost pocket and wristwatches, was a leading popularizer of the use of radium for watch hands and indices through the introduction of their "Radiolite" watches in 1916. As my first name is Ben, I started to collect these alarmclocks since about 1970. Immediately after, substances like promethium and tritium were used as a luminous material, and they're still being used today. Condition is important, but clocks can be restored. WECKER (CW arrow)/UHR (CCW arrow) knob with ring: CW winds alarm; CCW winds clock. The phosphor deterioration means you can't see a glow anymore, but . Going back further in time, here is a pretty hypnotizing silent film released by Westclox in the early 1920s to promote the Big Ben and other products. . Thanks, Teri. The women also left a legacy to science that has been termed invaluable., shifting from serif to sans-serif typefaces and from slightly ornate to more streamlined minute and second hands, all of which eased legibility; setting the clock face closer to the glass, reducing shadows; and creating a slightly smaller form overall., three women fainted, several clerks were trampled, and four showcase windows were shattered before police untangled a jam of 2,500 women and a few stout-hearted men who converged on the store., For That Healthy Glow, Drink Radiation . Posted on 1 second ago; June 24, 2022 . Westclox set up a factory in England in the 1940s and also in Scotland. I bought a 1970s Westclox pocket watch with a Hotwheels face that says authorized seller on it. They made the most of the perk, wearing their good dresses to the plant so theyd shine in the dance halls at night, and even painting radium onto their teeth for a smile that would knock their suitors dead., When I went home and washed my hands in a dark bathroom, they would appear luminous and ghostly,, My clothes, hanging in a dark closet, gave off a phosphorescent glare. During World War II they had some fantastic ads that you can see on my website like, Victory Wont Wait for the Nation Thats Late, and Guard Your Big Ben where they show a bulldog and a soldier with a gun guarding a Big Ben because during the war they stopped making clocks for the consumer market and totally switched over to military work. In clocks, as in all other lines of goods, there are two classes of consumersthe millions and the millionaires. The policy of the company is one of highly specialized production. When Westclox changed over to the style 8 Big Ben and Baby Ben in 1964, they used 4 divisions per 5 minutes, I believe to make the alarm easier to set. When many of these early Big Ben advertisements were still running, Gaston Le Roys life took a sudden and dramatic turn. Big Ben Style Series. Westclox Scotland produced its first clock on 21 September 1948; a spring wound alarm with a 4-inch (10cm) dial. How do you set the time on a old fashioned alarm clock? Ruth Spayer at the Westclox Museum tracked down a newspaper story from the Daily Post-Tribune on March 21, 1944, describing a scene in which three women fainted, several clerks were trampled, and four showcase windows were shattered before police untangled a jam of 2,500 women and a few stout-hearted men who converged on the store.. In 1918 the Big Ben case was improved to make it dustproof, as described in patent #1,300,278 issued to Kern on April 15, 1919. For me its kind of an inexpensive hobby because as a boy I could find them for about a dollar a piece, sometimes in good condition. It is a Medbury-4W #4910. They managed to extract 1 mg of radium from ten tonnes of the uranium ore pitchblende (uranium oxide, U 3 O 8), a considerable feat, given the chemically methods of separation available to them.They identified that it was a new element because its atomic spectrum revealed new lines. styles to organize them Donohue, like many of her young peers in the radium industry, eventually realized that her amusing glow had been a warning of severe exposure to a radioactive substance. Was westclox ever manufactured in germany and if so when? If you look at a Baby Ben in the 1959 Sears catalog, they sold for about nine dollars and if you go to a Wal Mart today you can still buy a Baby Ben for about nine dollars, but the quality isnt the same. Instead, it would be better to take the box outside and remove the lid there, which would allow any built-up gas to rapidly dissipate." The watches tested were produced from the 1920s through the '60s, and are a mix of British, Swiss, and American origin. hi, I have a cocacola square clock. When did the use of radium stop? [6] Decaying radium also produces the gas radon, recognized as the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States[6] and the United Kingdom. Even so, our case-less dials are certainly best left behind glass and out of reach, a sad reminder of a terrible and preventable episode in industrial history, the effects of which continued to plague the town of Ottawa for many years afterward. Im always interested in the history and the variations of clocks and how they fit in the scheme of things, what came before and what came after. By 1930, all dial painters stopped pointing their brushes by mouth. Accueil; Services; Ralisations; Annie Moussin; Mdias; 514-569-8476 The clock is several houndred pounds, and keeps great time. Thanks so much As seen below, the company made something of a symbolic gesture out of honoring the last Big Ben to roll off the assembly line on July 31, 1942, the day when all production shifted to government contracts for the duration of the war. Many folks might not realize that early vintage clock dials were painted with radioluminescent paint, which is a mixture of fluorescent salts (these produce the glow) and radium-226, which is a dangerous and highly radioactive element. It is in the manufacture of alarm and one-day clocks that these results are the most noticeable, because in this field the quality of the product had always been subordinated to the market value, and the general feeling was one of let good enough alone., In this particular branch of the clock industry the Western Clock Manufacturing Company has achieved great results in the last twenty years. In the comprehensive Big Ben & Baby Ben Identification Guide, organized by researchers Richard Tjarks and Bill Stoddard, they credit the original brilliant marketing of these little wonders almost entirely to one mana 28 year-old French immigrant named Gaston Le Roy. They call it Shabby Chic and sell it on eBay for 60 to 80 dollars. George Kern died on July 27, 1918 from a ruptured appendix, but his basic clock design lived on for years. I hung it on my wall and we tried to get it fixed but the repairman couldnt fix it. So I swapped them, and its worked perfectly ever since. The other thing is reproductions. It has a removable bottom decorative piece as well as a top rounded top flat piece of wood with a verticle wooden slat on the back extending to become a peg-like extension to fit and secure the decorative piece into the top of the clock. The company later changed its name to the United States Radium Corporation. In a few short years, thanks to Dr. Douglas's efforts, the amount of radium available in the US more than quintupled. One of the objects on display in the Benton County Historical Society's Corvallis Museum is this Westclox Radium Dial Clock. Westclox closed its Peru factory 35 years ago. [left to right: F.W. We pay his railroad fare on all orders for a dozen or more, we brand him with your name in lots of 24., unconsciously characterized the manunaffected, direct, devoted to his cause., Radiums luminosity was part of its allure,, The dial painters soon became known as the ghost girls because by the time they finished their shifts, they themselves would glow in the dark. The women also left a legacy to science that has been termed invaluable.. In fact, one of their designs for the military, the terrifying sounding "WarAlarm," spurred a small shopping riot in Chicago in 1944 when a small batch of the clocks was made available for commercial purchase at a downtown store. The Radium Girls were female factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting watch dials with self-luminous paint. Did westclox stop using radioactive paint by the 1960s? Read more about "Radium Girls" here. The Westclox Big Ben Alarm Clock Vintage is an iconic timepiece that has been around since the early 1900s. The drinking fountain worked.. Medical researchers extended the use of radium to cure impotence in men and women by creating fertility drugs with the element to "stimulate" reproduction. Something about them has always been ingrained in me. Can someone get back to me as to what it is and possibe age of it. There are also some specialty chapters, like an alarm clock chapter and a 400-day clock chapter, one that specializes in wristwatches and one on early American pocket watches. A pair of teenage boys broke into the abandoned factory and set a fire that quickly spread and enveloped much of the central complex. Stahlbergs company goes bankrupt not once, but twice, within its first several years. Importantly, the health risks tied to these old clocks is generally believed to be quite minimal, so long as one avoids long-term exposure or directly ingesting the paint as the Ghost Girls had. For the town of Peruwhich had tied much of its identity to Westclox for the better part of a centurythe damage went beyond financial. By Dave Margulius During the early 1900's, the effects of radiation exposure were not well understood, and radium was frequently . It is in good condition and has the original pendulum and key. Stahlberg knows that no other noteworthy clock company has ever succeeded west of the Hudson, let alone smalltown Illinois, but he dives into the challenge, establishing his first factory. When did Westclox close? [3] The Radiolite series, made in various sizes and models, became a signature of the Connecticut-based company. It emits alpha, beta, and gamma radiation. Thanks, Paula. Safety Matthiessen, 1904 Western Clock MFG Co. catalog cover, and the original Peru factory in 1905]. . Its basically all forward momentum from here. Buy Now. The alarm mechanism was also improved as part of Kerns new patents, with an intermittent ringing that kind of acted as an archaic form of snooze alarm. Not everyone involved with the manufacturing of Westclox products was employed directly by Westclox, however. [Workers assembling Big Ben alarm clocks at the Westclox plant, 1910s. The use of radium was discontinued since the 1960s. They typically have a round brass base with a glass dome over them; they were made in Germany from the 1890s up through the 1970s, and a lot of people collect them. The sound is very good when I compare it with the Howard Miller and the Jauke I just purchases, its loud and resonates very well. The lume used on vintage Rolex watches was radium-based, and radium remained the standard for nearly all Rolex lume until 1963, when growing health concerns forced a shift away from it. I have a Westclox Magnet Key Part number 031723 I think was used to open a door as it has an arrow on 1 end. I would like to find out about this clock. Dont know if someone ingraved date on when took down or if the original. I know it was purchased in 1937 because it belonged to my elderly friends who were married in 1938. People did some bad things over the years just to get them running. can anybody tell me about this piece? Like many East Coasters, he decides to pursue his fortune out West, but unlike many of his peers, he skips the bustling Second City in favor of a promising river & railroad region downstate; where the towns of Peru, LaSalle and Ottawa intersect. It is and Elias Ingraham Brass Clock with a patent stamp of September 30, 1862. Westclox began as the United Clock Company of Peru, Illinois in 1885. Any information would be very helpful. Collectors Weekly: When did you discover that there were other clock collectors? theres the problem, there were two gears that were in backwards. I tend to be a nitty gritty detail kind of guy. It is battery operated and takes a D battery. I read (but cant remember where) that about 40,000 were made. Radium paint can be ingested by inhaling flaking paint particles. Style 5 dial design]. The NAWCC is dedicated to providing association services, promoting interest in and encouraging the collecting of clocks and watches including disseminating knowledge of the same. This will broaden my view in the clock. As stated it is working and keeps time. In this interview Bill Stoddard talks about collecting antique Westclox Big Ben and Baby Ben alarm clocks, and discusses clock collecting in general. A few years later my grandma gave me one that worked, and my aunt gave me another one. Same as the nickel version but in a gold-plated case. Theres a clock that came down the family, my great great granddad bought it used in about 1885, it was actually sold new in about 1839, one of the first of the weight-driven brass clocks. Thanks very mutch, I just acquired a sir w.h. The precise, delicate skill of painting clock dials with radium powder promised a much higher salary than most factory jobs available to women at the time (upwards of $18 a week), and the company soon employed as many as 200 female workers in its Ottawa plant.
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