Five Things few know about the Seth Thomas Clock Company

Five things you know about the Seth Thomas Clock Company. Let's start with the fact that on April 10th, 1983, a Royal Seth Mantle Clock was ceremoniously burned in public at a mock funeral in the town of Thomaston, Connecticut. The town named after Seth Thomas. When I stumbled upon this little-known episode in the history of Seth Thomas Clock Company, I knew two things. I needed to learn more about the Seth Thomas Clock Company and this event. And I wanted one of these clocks. Both of my goals were accomplished and later I'll show you some of the details of this clock. To substantiate the claims made in this video, you'll see this notification when a link to a newspaper article appears in the description. The link will take you to an actual clip of the article so that you can read it yourself. Seth Thomas, a huge name in American clocks and to this day multitudes of clocks can be found branded Seth Thomas. Unfortunately, some errors or maybe just incomplete information have crept into the history of the company. First, we'll review a basic history of the Seth Thomas Company to illustrate how huge the Seth Thomas name and reputation became in the United States. Then I'll reveal the five things few know about this former great American clock company. Seth Thomas set up his clockmaking enterprise in Plymouth, Connecticut in 1813 in a section of the town known as Plymouth Hollow. Near the end of the Civil War, Plymouth Hollow, Connecticut started being referred to as Thomaston in honor of Seth Thomas. But it wasn't until July 6th, 1875 that the Plymouth Hollow District formally separated from Plymouth and incorporated it as Thomaston. Seth Thomas died on January 29th, 1859 and control of the company passed to his sons. The numbers and types of clocks exploded while the company was under control of the Thomas brothers. Around 1865, the Seth Thomas Clock Company bought into the production of tower clocks and street clocks. The tower clocks consisted of huge mechanisms built and installed by the Seth Thomas Company and can be found in nearly every state and in multiple foreign countries. The most famous of the big clocks include Philadelphia Hall and Grand Central Station. The production of tower clocks by Seth Thomas continued until 1929, but enough spare parts remained so that the last Seth Thomas tower clock installation occurred in 1942. In the years that followed, Seth Thomas became a large distributor of clocks of all sorts, while still producing their iconic wood mantle and grandfather clocks with German movements. You can see the variety and change of styles as the catalogs progressed from the 1930s, the 40s, the 1950s, 60s, and 1970s. They kept pace with the times. Many of the modern clocks were made in Germany and some in Japan, including the flip clocks and digital desk clocks. By the 1970s, there would be untold millions of clocks bearing the Seth Thomas name. And now, the five little known facts about the Seth Thomas Company. Number 1. General Time Corporation did not buy Seth Thomas, as often stated online. General Time Corporation did not even exist until it was formed to merge Seth Thomas with West Clocks in 1930. At the beginning of the Great Depression, the stockholders of Seth Thomas Company and the Western Clock Company of Illinois, clockmakers under the trade name West Clocks, approved a merger on November 12, 1930. The companies were combined through the formation of the holding company, General Time Instruments Corporation, the name eventually being shortened to General Time Corporation. This marked the formal passing of the company from control of the Thomas family. Going forward, the Seth Thomas Company would be known as the Seth Thomas Division of General Time Corporation. One of the historical inaccuracies often repeated is that General Time Corporation bought Seth Thomas Clock Company in 1930. Number 2. Seth Thomas was not bought by Talley Industries. The Seth Thomas Clock Company merged with Talley Industries through a hostile takeover completed in 1970. In the 1960s, some in the business world considered Talley Industries obscure. The company, presided over by German-born Franz Talley, was known primarily for making pilot ejection seats for the U.S. military, although later they made large profits from airbag technology. In 1967, Talley Industries reported sales of just over 24 million, while General Time Corporation reported sales of almost 130 million. In 1968, Franz Talley signaled his desire for a merger of General Time with Talley Industries. It became very clear, very quickly, that the Board of Directors of General Time were strongly against this merger. Talley then proceeded with the hostile takeover of the company. The rancor of their moment can be seen in a large newspaper advertisement put out by the Board of General Times, encouraging stockholders not to vote in Franz Talley and his team to the Board of Directors, warning that they did not have the company's interest in mind. In a protracted proxy battle, Talley secured enough shareholder votes to get him and his hand-picked crew elected to the board. They immediately worked to get the merger completed. The merger was finally approved by the SEC in January 1970. You'll often read that Talley Industries bought General Time in 1968. As you know now, that's not at all how the transaction transpired. In such mergers, there is often payouts and stock exchanges that get distributed among the shareholders, but they did not buy General Time. It was acquired in a hostile takeover that was not complete until 1970. So you know, if you see a label with Talley Industries on a Seth Thomas clock, it had to be made between 1970 and 1988. We'll discuss the significance of 1988 later. With the General Time acquisition and other mergers, Talley vaulted from a relatively small defense products supplier to a diversified multinational conglomerate with annual sales of nearly $300 million a year by the mid-1970s, allowing Franz Talley to achieve his goal of becoming a Fortune 500 company. But not long after, on June 18, 1978, founder and namesake of Talley Industries, Franz G. Talley died of a heart attack at the age of 59 in Los Angeles, California. Number 3. In 1988, General Time, which included the Seth Thomas clock company, was bought back from Talley Industries by stockholders, but ultimately went bankrupt and ceased to exist as a company in 2001. In the late 1980s, Talley Industries had to undergo major restructuring to return to profitability. In October of 1987, Talley Industries announced that it would divest itself of most of General Time's assets. In 1988, Fred Pastille and four colleagues implemented a management buyout from Talley Industries. This positioned Pastille as president, CEO, and principal owner of General Time. The fact that Talley Industries' control of Seth Thomas was bought out is a little-known or reported fact about Seth Thomas and General Time. The Talley Industries' name on labels was no longer present on Seth Thomas' clocks after 1988. This can confuse some collectors as they may assume the lack of the Talley name means the clock is a pre-1970 clock. Unfortunately, Seth Thomas would only last about 13 more years after leaving Talley Industries' control. In June 2001, General Time announced that it was closing its entire operation. This action effectively ended the history of the Seth Thomas clock company after 188 years. The Calibri Group subsequently acquired the rights to the Seth Thomas name and assets. Calibri had concerns which included high-end cigar lighters and accessories, in addition to jewelry and watch import and sales. The NAWCC, the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors, purchased from the Calibri Group their entire collection of Seth Thomas historical records, drawings, photographs, advertisements, and documents. Modern clocks labeled Seth Thomas have nothing to do with the Seth Thomas clock company. Calibri, also doing business at CST Enterprises and now owned by Brooklyn-based Alliance Time, still holds the rights to the Seth Thomas name. You can find some wall clocks that have the Seth Thomas name licensed by this company and produced outside of the USA. To their credit, the current clocks have the Seth Thomas name subtitled with Established 1813 instead of Since 1813 because as we all know now, Seth Thomas is just a brand name anymore. And sadly, Seth Thomas as a clock company ceased to exist in 2001. Number 5. A mock funeral for the Seth Thomas Company in 1983 foreshadowed the company's eventual doom. In November 1982, in a move that shocked the town named after Seth Thomas, Teleindustries directed that operations at the Seth Thomas factory in Thomaston, Connecticut move to Athens, Georgia and merge with the Westclock factory there. Sunday, April 10, 1983, 2 p.m. A mock funeral for the Seth Thomas company took place preceding the formal closing of the factory on April 15, 1983. After the last four workers were laid off, ending the 170-year history of the Seth Thomas Company in the town named after Seth Thomas. A wooden-cased royal Seth mantle clock was ceremoniously burned by former factory workers in a mock funeral for the Seth Thomas clockworks in Thomaston, Connecticut. The expensive clock, which was said to have been borrowed from the factory, was carried on a funeral beard behind a hearse with dozens of mourners trudging behind in a steady rain. A local priest was present but left before the clock burning took place. It was said that he and some in the community were disturbed by the violent destruction of the clock. Some also expressed fear that the event would anger Teleindustries who still maintained business interests in the area. In spite of this, the royal Seth clock was stuffed with gasoline-soaked paper towels and burned. Photographs and a story of the event were published in the Hartford Current newspaper the next day. This unusual moment remains a little-known event in the history of the Seth Thomas clock company. I was fortunate to have stumbled on this story years ago and I was struck by the shock, sadness and anger of the townspeople. I decided to seek out the model of the clock that was burned that day in 1983. As mentioned, it is the Seth Thomas Royal Seth mantle clock. The clock is quite large for a mantle clock and very heavy. It features a clockworks mechanism with the designation A403-002. This was a Seth Thomas numbering system. The movement is actually the German 1050-020 Hörnli clock movement which uses the number 8 winding key. There are three different chimes that can be selected or no chimes. I'm not exactly sure what the clock means to me. It's a clock from a little-known sad moment in Seth Thomas history. It represents how day-to-day workers often get negatively affected in big business dealings. And it spurred me on to clarify some of the history of the Seth Thomas clock company. And now going forward, if you visit Flip Clock Fan Studios, you may hear chimes from a Seth Thomas mantle clock in commemoration of the Seth Thomas company. One of the greatest clock companies in US history.