History
A Grandfather's Longcase History
A brief history of the grandfather clock! For a more detailed history scroll down to the origin of the grandfather clock.
Cuckoo's hazy history
Not all details about the origin of the cuckoo clock are accurately known. Below is a breif history of what is known about the cuckoo clock
Keeping track of time
 
Humans have been keeping track of time throughout the ages using everything from hourglasses to sundials.  During the second half of the 13th century, the very first mechanical clocks were developed. These early clocks were huge contraptions made with heavy iron frames and large gears, usually placed in church towers and striking the church bell on the top of each hour. Enhancements led to an hour hand and the ability of the clocks to strike every quarter-hour. Eventually, during the first half of the 15th century, personal clocks started to appear. 
 
The grandfather clock gets a boost from astronomers
 
In 1582 Galileo Galilei discovered that you could use a pendulum to keep time. He studied pendulum clocks, and drew what became the first designs for a grandfather clock. In 1656 Christiaan Huygens applied what Galileo had discovered and developed the first pendulum clock, the prototype for the grandfather clock.  These clocks hung on walls and were affectionately entitled "wags-on-the-wall" due to their short pendulums.
 
Grandfather clocks get taller
 
The first grandfather clocks did not keep time well. An early grandfather clock could lose as much as ten minutes a day. In 1670 William Clement noticed that by making the pendulum in a clock longer he could make the clock keep better time. The advancements resulted in an increase in precision that meant the clocks held time to within a few seconds variance per week. This was the start of the popularity of long case clocks, later renamed grandfather clocks, due to their ability to keep time so accurately.
 
Final improvements to grandfather clocks
 
In 1721 George Graham noticed that temperature changes in the pendulum of a grandfather clock could cause it run slower or faster. Graham improved the design of the grandfather clock by compensating for the temperature changes in the pendulums. His changes led to grandfather clocks that were accurate to 1 second a day. Current grandfather clock designs are based on those models.
What is a cuckoo clock?
 
A cuckoo clock is a clock, typically pendulum driven, that strikes the hours using small bellows and pipes that imitate the call of the Common Cuckoo in addition to striking a wire gong. The mechanism to produce the cuckoo call was installed in almost every kind of cuckoo clock since the middle of the eighteenth century and has remained almost without variation until the present.
 
Who came up with the idea?
 
In 1629 the first known description of a cuckoo clock was penned by an Augsburg nobleman by the name of Philipp Hainhofer. In 1650 a widely known handbook on music called Musurgia Universalis was published, and inside the scholar Athanasius Kircher describes a mechanical organ with several automated figures, including a mechanical cuckoo. This book is the first to document with words and pictures how a mechanical cuckoo works. The bird automatically opens its beak and moves both its wings and tail. Simultaneously, we hear the call of the cuckoo, created by two organ pipes, tuned to a minor or major third.
 
In 1669 Domenico Martinelli, in his Handbook on elementary clocks Horologi Elementari (1669), suggests using the call of the cuckoo to indicate the hours. Starting at that time the mechanism of the cuckoo clock was known. Any mechanic or clockmaker, who could read Latin or Italian, knew after reading the books that it was quite doable to have the cuckoo announce the hours.
 
Where did they come from?
 
In the Black Forest area of Germany, opinion has it that around the year 1630 a glass peddler who had traveled to Czechoslovakia brought back a crude, wooden clock called a “wood-beam clock” which used wooden gears and common stones as weights. There was no pendulum; it used instead a piece of wood called a “Waag” which moved back and forth above the clock dial. Crude or not, the clock was a definite improvement over the hourglasses and sundials that were the norm in those days.
 
The first cuckoo clock dates back to around 1730. It was a product of the almost 100 years of clock making in the Black Forest of Germany that started sometime in the mid 17th century.  Though there are a number of stories of who built the first clock, Franz Anton Ketterer has been given the credit. Once the clock caught on, people began to make clocks in their homes during the long, harsh winters.
 
Clock Developments
 
The first cuckoo clocks were primitive compared to those made later. Their movements were made with wooden plates and gears. Many of the clocks had square faces painted with water color paints. As time went on, the clocks became more and more sophisticated in their designs and decorations. The birds' wings and beaks were animated and some decorated with feathers. The many themes decorating the clocks were only limited to the imagination of the painters of the faces for the clocks. They included scenes of family, hunting, military motifs and more. Some were even decorated with porcelain columns and enameled dials. Some of the more famous early cuckoo clock makers in the Black Forest were Theodore Ketterer, Johann Baptist Beha and Fidel Hepting.
 
By the late 1800s the cuckoo clock industry was somewhat industrialized. As well as factories where the clocks were made and assembled, Families would live and work together in large cottages, each individual working on the part of the clock they specialized in. Some carved the decorations, others assembling the movement and still others fitting movements in the cases. There were an estimated 13,500 men and women engaged in the clock making industry in the villages in and around Triberg.
Origin of the Grandfather Clock
 
Humans have been keeping track of time throughout the ages using everything from hourglasses to sundials.  During the second half of the 13th century, the very first mechanical clocks were developed. These early clocks were huge contraptions made with heavy iron frames and large gears, usually placed in church towers and striking the church bell on the top of each hour.
 
Enhancements led to an hour hand and the ability of the clocks to strike every quarter-hour. Eventually, during the first half of the 15th century, personal clocks started to appear. As time progressed, these clocks became a popular fixture in the homes of the upper classes, especially grandfather clocks.
 
A minute hand was added, and eventually a glass front was introduced to better display the internal workings of the pendulum, chains, and weights. These lovely timepieces were not referred to as grandfather clocks but rather were called "long case" clocks or "floor" clocks until nearly 1900. Throughout these early years, grandfather clocks were made almost exclusively for people of noble heritage. Though produced in America since the late 1600's, it was not until the 19th century that grandfather clocks became affordable for everyone.
 
A longcase clock, also tall-case clock, grandfather clock or floor clock is a freestanding, weight-driven, pendulum clock with the pendulum held inside the tower, or waist of the case. Clocks of this style are commonly around 1.8-2.4m (6-8 feet) tall. The case often features elaborately carved ornamentation on the hood, or bonnet, which surrounds and frames the dial, or clock face. Most longcase clocks are striking clocks, which means they sound the time on each hour or fraction of an hour.
 
Galileo was first credited with the discovery that a pendulum could be used to keep time. This led to Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens developing the first pendulum clock, the prototype for the grandfather clock. These clocks hung on walls and were affectionately entitled "wags-on-the-wall" due to their short pendulums.
 
By 1670, an even longer pendulum was used, various changes were incorporated, and the first grandfather clock was produced. The English clockmaker William Clement is credited with the development of this form. The advancements resulted in an increase in precision that meant the clocks held time to within a few seconds variance per week. This was the start of the popularity of grandfather clocks due to their ability to keep time so accurately.
 
The terms "grandfather", "grandmother", and "granddaughter" have been applied to longcase clocks. Although there is no specifically defined difference among these terms, the general perception seems to be that a clock smaller than 1.5m (5 feet) is a granddaughter; over 1.5m (5 feet) is a grandmother; and over 1.8m (6 feet) is a grandfather.
 
Traditionally, such clocks were made with two types of movement: eight-day movements and 30-hour movements. A clock with an eight-day movement required winding only once a week, while the generally lower-priced 30-hour clock had to be wound every day. Eight-day clocks are often driven by two weights - one driving the pendulum and the other the striking mechanism, which usually consisted of a bell or chimes. Such movements usually have two keyholes on either side of the dial to wind each one. By contrast, 30-hour clocks often had a single weight to drive both the pendulum and the chimes. Some 30-hour clocks were made with false keyholes, for customers who wished that guests to their home would think that the household was able to afford the more expensive eight-day clock. All modern chiming grandfather clocks have 8-day movements. Most grandfather clocks are cable-driven, meaning that the weights are suspended by cables that wrap around a pulley mounted to the top of each weight. Such clocks are wound by inserting a special crank (called a "key") into holes in the clock's face and turning it. Others, however, are chain-driven, meaning that the weights are suspended by chains that wrap around gears in the clock's mechanism, with the other end of the chain hanging down next to the weight. To wind a chain-driven grandfather clock, simply pull on the other end of each chain until the weights come up to just under the clock's face.
 
In the early 20th century, quarter-hour chime sequences were added to grandfather clocks. At the top of each hour, the full chime sequence sounds, immediately followed by the hour strike. At 15 minutes after each hour, 1/4 of the chime sequence plays, at the bottom of each hour, half of the chime sequence plays, and at 15 minutes before each hour, 3/4 of the chime sequence plays. Almost all modern mechanical grandfather clocks have at least Westminster Quarters, and many also offer the option of Whittington chimes or St. Michael's chimes, selectable by a switch mounted on the right side of the dial, which also allows one to silence the chimes if desired. As a result of adding chime sequences, all modern mechanical grandfather clocks have three weights instead of just two. The left weight provides power for the hour strike; the middle weight provides power for the clock's pendulum and general timekeeping functions, while the right weight provides power for the quarter-hour chime sequences.
 
How longcase clocks came to be known as "grandfather clocks"
 
During the 19th century, two brothers named Jenkins worked as managers at the George Hotel in Pierce Bridge, County Durham, England. One of the brothers died and, according to the story told to Henry Clay Work in 1875, the clock (made by James Thompson) began to lose time. Repair attempts were made, but failed. When the other brother died at the age of 90, the clock stopped running altogether, and was never repaired in remembrance of the brothers.
 
Work decided to write a song about the story of this clock, which he called My Grandfather's Clock. The song became popular, and it is from this song that the current usage derives.
Grandfather's Clock Song Lyrics
"My grandfather's clock was too tall for the shelf
So it stood ninety years on the floor
It was taller by half than the old man himself
But it weighed not a pennyweight more
 
It was bought on the morn on the day that he was born
It was always his treasure and pride
But it stopped, short, never to go again
When the old man died
 
Ninety years without slumbering
Tic toc tic toc
His life's seconds numbering
Tic toc tic toc
It stopped, short, never to go again
When the old man died.
In watching its pendulum swing to and fro
Many hours he had spent when a boy
And through childhood and manhood, the clock seemed to know
And to share both his grief and his joy
 
For it struck 24 when he entered at the door
With a blooming and beautiful bride,
But it stopped, short, never to go again
When the old man died
 
CHORUS
 
My grandfather said that of those he could hire
Not a servant so faithful he'd found,
For it kept perfect time and it had one desire
At the close of each day to be wound
 
At it kept to its place, not a frown upon its face
At its hands never hung by its side
But it stopped, short, never to go again
When the old man died
 
CHORUS
 
It rang an alarm in the still of the night,
An alarm that for years had been dumb
And we knew that his spirit was pluming for flight
That his hour of departure had come
 
Still the clock kept the time
With a soft and muffled chime
As we silently stood by his side
But it stopped, short, never to go again
When the old man died"