History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, and Life of

Jerome, Chauncey, 1793-1868Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.0

Word count: 169K words
Chapters: 17

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, and Life ofAuthor: Jerome, Chauncey, 1793-1868,Language: English, Class: TS: Technology: Manufactures, Release Date: Jun 1, 2004

Editor's review

This book is the industry memoir of Chauncey Jerome, a nineteenth-century American clockmaker, and holds dual value as business history and personal biography. From a participant's perspective it records the key stage in which the American clock industry moved from handicraft workshops to large-scale production, covering manufacturing techniques, business methods, market development, and industry change, and can be cross-checked against works on the history of technology and industry. Its descriptions of practitioners' lives and the commercial environment also provide vivid detail for understanding nineteenth-century American manufacturing. The text is in the original English, with a period narrative voice, and is suitable for readers interested in industrial, technological, or business history when consulting sources or reading further; as a historical document it should be read with a sense of its source value, weighing specific figures and judgments with care.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers studying American industrial and technological history, for first-hand industry accounts
Enthusiasts of clockmaking and the transformation of handicraft, to broaden their understanding of craft and business
Readers of business and corporate history, to observe early manufacturing operations through a participant's eyes
General readers with English reading ability who enjoy historical memoirs

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking a systematic clockmaking technical tutorial or repair guide
Readers who prefer accessible Chinese-language books and are not in the habit of reading original English texts
Researchers expecting modern management conclusions and data analysis

Reading tips

Read the table of contents and preface first to clarify the chronology, then select chapters by industry stage.
Keep a brief timeline of nineteenth-century American industrial history at hand to check figures and events as you read.
Take notes on craft and business details and compare them with similar works on industrial history.
For the original English, read first for the general sense, then revisit key passages rather than checking every word.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book mainly about clockmaking technique or industry experience?

Its focus is the sixty years of change in the American clock industry as the author experienced it, including manufacturing, business, and industry figures, not a systematic clockmaking tutorial. Technical details serve the industry narrative, through which readers can learn about production organization and market change.

Can readers with only basic English read this book?

The book is in the original English, in an older narrative style with many long sentences and period expressions. Readers with basic English can first use a dictionary to grasp the general sense or read selected chapters; for those seeking only a quick overview, the reading difficulty will be on the high side.

Can the historical material in the book be cited directly?

As a participant's recollection, it offers a valuable personal perspective, but memory inevitably involves subjective selection, and specific figures and judgments should be checked against contemporary sources. It is suitable as a lead to historical material, not as the sole basis.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Jerome, Chauncey, 1793-1868 Author · American · 1793–1868

Chauncey Jerome (1793–1868) was an American clockmaker. Publicly available information about his life and career is limited. He wrote History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, and Life of, a work that records, from a firsthand perspective, the development of the clock industry in Connecticut and serves as an important reference for understanding nineteenth-century American clockmaking. The book combines industry history with personal memoir; its narrative is plain and concrete, focusing on the actual conditions of craftsmanship, business, and local manufacturing rather than on abstract discussion. For this reason it has long been regarded as a primary source of considerable value for the study of the early American clock trade, and it offers precious insight into how Connecticut rose to become a center of clock production.