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We're continuing to talk about the giant Connecticut clock making firms, the kinds of clocks that
you'll most likely see if you're out there collecting at auctions or shows or dealer
shops. We're going to focus right now on the William Gilbert Clock Company. One thing to
say first is that a lot of Gilbert Clocks on the dial, say Gilbert 1807 and I get called
all the time by people saying that they have a clock from the 1807. Gilbert was barely
alive at that point and the company is actually form in 1871. But they related the formation
of predecessor companies back to the 1807 date and confuse a lot of people on the process.
They actually continue to make clocks up to then, until 1975, I won't bore you with the
whole history of the company, it's all in the Tran Duy Ly Gilbert book that I have laying
here along with a couple examples Gilbert Clocks. I call the other giant companies,
they made hundreds, thousands of styles of clocks. I'm just showing you a few here. Here,
this first one is called the Gilbert Curfew Model. They were popular at that time, in
part because the bell actually rang up top when the clock struck the hours, remember
not chime, but struck the hours. It counted them out on this bell which actually a pretty
sweet sounding bell, which perhaps we can even hear if we move the time up. So here's
our clock striking. I also have a less expensive later novelty clock, these are sometimes called,
which I'll talk about later, more almost like an alarm clock, built into an interesting
style. Perhaps people that were interested in having a marine antique that wasn't as
expensive as some of the others that I'll talk about later on.