Today in Technology History
An event that occurred on this date in the history of technology.
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June 10
Our subject today is an American clockmaker who went from rags to riches, then back to rags.
Chauncey Jerome was born on June 10, 1793 -- exactly 210 years ago -- to a poor family in Connecticut. His father was a blacksmith and couldn't afford much education for young Chauncey. When he was nine years old, his father taught him to make nails, which he did for two years. After that, he worked for neighboring farmers for four years, and then he was apprenticed to a carpenter. He served in the militia during the War of 1812, then got married and went back to carpentry.
Jerome earned a little side money by building dials for grandfather clocks, but his first real experience with clock making came in the winter of 1816-17, when he spent a few months working for Eli Terry, the man who founded the first American clock factory. He inspired Jerome to start making clocks and clock cases full time.
In the mid-1820s, after a decade of no real success, Jerome founded a company with a few business partners, and he invented a new kind of bronze clock case that became the country's best selling clock. In addition to his factory in Connecticut, he opened two more factories in Virginia and South Carolina, since Southerners wouldn't buy "Yankee clocks."
Then, in the late 1830s, Jerome invented yet another new kind of clock, one that could operate for an entire day without requiring maintenance, yet was made of brass instead of wood. (The internal clockworks of the previous "one-day clocks," as they were called, had been made of wood.) Once again, his invention sold briskly, and Jerome became wealthier and could expand his business further.
His luck held until about 1850. In that year, Jerome became entangled in a stock scheme that also involved P.T. Barnum. After a couple of years of good profit, the venture went bust, and Jerome lost all his money. (Jerome would later blame Barnum, and Barnum blamed Jerome.) The former factory owner spent his sixties and seventies in obscurity and poverty, making clocks by hand and working for other factories. He died in 1868 at the age of 74.
Related links:
In his later years, Jerome wrote an autobiography that was also a history of the American clock making industry. This description of Jerome's second clock invention comes from that autobiography.
You can read another biography of Jerome on this page, if you can tolerate all the capital letters.
Click here to read one accounting of the stock scheme that cost Jerome his fortune.
Click here and here to read what we've written about American clockmakers.
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