The National Watch and Clock Museum
situated in Lancaster County, Pa., is acknowledged to house the largest and most complete chorological collection in North America.
The Museum's History
The museum originated from the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors, established in 1943 as the result of the joined efforts of hobbyists, educators, collectors, students and some watch connoisseurs. By the early 1950s, the association's secretary, collector Earl Strickler Replica Omega, the secretary of the organization managed to raise enough money to hire a staff to help him fulfill work in the association.
In 1971 the association acquired a building with the aim to open a museum and station the association's administration. In 1977, the nonprofit museum with fewer than 1,000 items welcomed everybody interested in the art of timekeeping.
The next stage in the history of the museum was a $7 million renovation concluded in 1999. The museum premises became twice as large featuring an absolutely new and redesigned exhibit space and a new two-story addition, a staff has grown to 30 people that take care of the extensive collection and 15,000 annual visitors, and the association has comprised 26,000 members from 55 countries.
The Museum's Collection
The museum's international in scope collection consists of over 12,000 items with about 20 percent being displayed. It covers a wide range of clocks, watches, tools, and other time-related mechanisms. The collection is particularly focused on nineteenth-century American clocks and watches. Additional museum's collections feature early English Tallcase clocks, Asian timepieces produced in Japan and China, and timekeeping devices from Germany, France Soccer Jersey Supplier, the Netherlands Replica Soccer Jersey, and Russia.
Chronologically, the collection's exhibits make all the visitors acquainted with all the history of timekeeping technology beginning with early non-mechanical devices to modern atomic and radio controlled clocks. The museum organizes special temporary exhibitions. Previous exhibits have demonstrated military timekeeping, fine timepieces from around the world, Civil War timepieces, and American Tallcase clocks.
The museum also comprises a library and research center with nearly 5,000 sources of information - computers, video records, books and journals giving the public a wonderful opportunity to research the treasury of the clocks and watches history received from our ancestors or purchased in antique stores. On the second Saturday of every month everybody may participate in different programs and meet interesting speakers.