1977 - The Home Computer Hits the MarketĪs developers started to explore the world of computers and technology, brands like Apple started to develop personal devices for non-technical users. The next time you use an IBM product, you can thank Willard Legrand Bundy and his employee time recorder. In 1911, this business was incorporated in New York State as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, which was the forerunner of IBM (International Business Machines Corporation). It eventually became the International Time Recorder Company (ITR). In the following years, as the time clock become commonplace in the American workplace, the Bundy Manufacturing Company merged with various other companies.
These machines were sold as a solution for "vexatious questions of recording employee time.” By 1898, the company expanded to 140 skilled workers and had sold more than 9,000 Bundy Time Recorders. In 1889, the Bundy Manufacturing Recording Company opened in Binghamton with eight employees and $150,000 in capital. The patent for his time recorder (the precursor to modern time tracking) was approved in 1888 and Bundy started a business manufacturing machines that would record when employees would clock in and clock out of work. Bundy holds patents for multiple cash registers and calculating machines, but he is known for inventing the employee time clock. Bundy opened a jewelry store and used his trade to develop multiple inventions, many of which are still used today. Willard Legrand Bundy was born and raised in Cayuga County, New York. 1888 - Willard Legrand Bundy Invents the Time ClockĪll while unions were protesting and lawmakers were debating working conditions, one man in New York was tinkering away in his jewelry shop. It wasn’t until the 1800s that employers started differentiating between flat-pay for work and an hourly rate. In this case, a salary could mean a flat fee for work or hourly compensation. Along with the word salary, many experts believe these roman origins are where the phrase “worth his salt,” comes from.įrom Ancient Rome through the Second Industrial Revolution in 1930, the term salary referred to payment for services. In Roman times, soldiers were paid a “salarium” or payment to buy salt, which was used as currency and was considered essential for living in the time.
500 BC - Ancient Rome Develops a “Salarium” for Soldiers Before humans could track time workers were most likely paid by the day. The earliest sundials can be traced back to 1500 BC from ancient Babylonian and Egyptian astronomy. The sundial represents the first relatively accurate method of tracking the time of day. Let’s go back in time - so far back that people were still using shells as money - to explore the history of employee time tracking and how it shapes today’s workplace. There are dozens of factors that contribute to the modern workplace, and employee time tracking plays a valuable role in our daily lives.
#WHEN WERE CLOCKS INVENTED UPDATE#
*When the rhythm of a pendulum or similar mechanism’s periodic motion remains constant, regardless of its amplitude.Have you ever considered where the employee time clock comes from? Or why we have an eight-hour workday? Or why you still update employee hours in a spreadsheet? The very things we take for granted were once controversial ideas and revolutionary inventions in history. However, the reciprocating motion of the foliot balance was not isochronous*, and it was therefore unable to provide stable accuracy. The pallets follow the rhythm of the foliot balance’s reciprocating motion and mesh with the teeth of the wheel (escape wheel) of the crown wheel escapement to keep the rotation to a steady speed.īy adjusting the position of the weights on the foliot balance, or changing their weight, the speed of the oscillation could be adjusted to either speed up or slow down the clock. The crown wheel escapement comprises a crownlike wheel (escape wheel) and the two pallets connected to the rotating shaft of the foliot balance. At the center of the foliot balance is a rotating shaft with two protruding pallets attached at the top and bottom. Generally, a foliot balance comprises a rod with toothlike projections along its top and weights hanging from both ends, which swings back and forth horizontally.