Bundy Manufacturing Company

The Bundy Manufacturing Company was a 19th-century American manufacturer of timekeeping devices that went through a series of mergers, eventually becoming part of International Business Machines and Simplex Time Recorder Company. It was the first time-recording company in the world to produce time clocks, colloquially known as 'Bundys'. The company was founded by the Bundy Brothers.

Bundy Manufacturing Company
IndustryTimekeeper devices
Founded1889
FoundersHarlow E. Bundy, Willard L. Bundy
Defunct1958
FateMerged into the Simplex Time Recorder Company
Successors
Headquarters
Binghamton, New York
ParentSimplex Time Recorder Company

Willard Legrand Bundy was born on 8 December 1845[1] in Otsego, New York, and died on 19 January 1907.[2] His family later moved to Auburn, New York, where he worked as a jeweler and invented a time clock in 1888.[1] He later obtained patents of many mechanical devices.[3]

Harlow E. Bundy was born in 1856 in Auburn, New York. He was a graduate of Hamilton College. He died in 1916 in Pasadena, California, after retiring from business in 1915.

Timeline

Unknown date: founding of Accurate Time Stamp Company.

Unknown date: founding of Chicago Time Register Company.

Unknown date: founding of Syracuse Time Recording Company.

1888: Willard L. Bundy invents the key recorder, applies it to time keeping for his employees.[4]

1888: Dr. Alexander Dey invents the dial time recorder.[5]

1889: Harlow E. Bundy and Willard L. Bundy incorporate the Bundy Manufacturing Company in Binghamton, New York: the first time-recording company in the world to produce time clocks.[6][7] The Bundy Manufacturing Company begins with just eight employees and $150,000 capital.[8]

1890: The Accurate Time Stamp Company (later renamed the Standard Time Stamp Company)- A Complete Automatic Time-Dating Stamp.[9][10]

1893: Alexander Dey and relatives form the Dey Patents Co., later renamed the Dey Time Register Co. of Syracuse, New York.[11][12][13]<

1894: Daniel M. Cooper patents the first card time-recorder. The Willard and Frick Manufacturing Company is organized to market Cooper's invention under the trade name "Rochester".[14][15][16]

1896: George Winthrop Fairchild joins Bundy Manufacturing Company as both an investor and director.[17]

1898: About 9,000 Bundy Time Recorders have been produced, advertised as solving "vexatious questions of recording employee time".[18]

1898: A New Time Register, manufactured by the Chicago Time Register Company.[19]

1899: Bundy Manufacturing Company acquires the Standard Time Stamp Company, manufacturers of a timestamp and a card recorder.[20][21][22]

1900: The International Time Recording Company of New Jersey is formed: a merger of the time-recording business of Bundy Mfg., its subsidiary, the Standard Time Stamp Company, and Willard and Frick Mfg.[23][24] Bundy Mfg. continues to manufacture other products, such as the Bundy Adding Machine (see 1905, 1910).

1901: ITR re-incorporates as a New York company.[25]

1901: ITR acquires the Chicago Time Register Company: the first, "Merritt" autograph time-recorder company in the world and a manufacturer of key, card and autograph employee time recorders.[26][27]

1903: The Bundy brothers have a falling-out. Willard L. Bundy moves to Syracuse, where he and his son form the W.H. Bundy Recording Company - manufacturing a clock similar to the ITR manufactured clocks.[28]

1905: The Bundy Adding Machine is patented (advertised 1904-06)[29][30][31]

1906: The Bundy Manufacturing Company and ITR relocate from Binghamton, New York to side-by-side locations in Endicott, New York.[32][33]

1907: ITR acquires Dey Time Register Co. Manufacturing of dial time recorders moved from Syracuse to Endicott.[34] ITR's motto is Safeguarding the Minute.[35]

1907: Willard L. Bundy dies.[1]

1908: ITR acquires the Syracuse Time Recording Co.[36]

1910: "New York State Men: Biographic Studies and Character Portraits", Frederick S. Hills (ed), states that Harlow Bundy still holds the positions of treasurer and general manager of Bundy Mfg "now being engaged in the manufacture of adding machines, the time recording business having been merged in the International Time Recording Co., of Endicott, in 1901".

1910/11: Willard L. Bundy's son forms the W.H. Bundy Time Card Printing Co and is listed as the vice president of the Monitor Time Clock Company, Syracuse New York.[28]

1911: Charles Ranlett Flint amalgamates (via stock acquisition)the Bundy Manufacturing Company, ITR, the Tabulating Machine Company and the Computing Scale Company into the new Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) holding company.[37][38][39] Fairchild is president of the new company and will later be chairman. Harlow Bundy is vice-president of the new company. The individual companies continue to operate using their established names.[40]

1916: W.H. Bundy/Monitor firm sold to Simplex Time Recorder Company.[28]

1924: CTR renamed International Business Machines

1933. IBM dispenses with the holding company structure, offices are consolidated and the subsidiary names, "Bundy", etc. are removed.[41][42]

1935: Since 1907 or earlier, ITR (now the IBM Time Equipment Division) had published a magazine, Time, for employees and customers that IBM now renames THINK.[35]

1958: IBM and its predecessor companies made clocks and other time recording products for 70 years, culminating in the 1958 sale of the domestic IBM Time Equipment Division to Simplex Time Recorder Company.[43]

See also

Notes and references
  1. Willard L. Bundy Biography bundymuseum.org Archived 2013-05-28 at the Wayback Machine
  2. Rootsweb
  3. Annual Report of the Commissioner of Patents: For the Year 1891. U.S. Government Printing Office. 1892. p. 52.
  4. Engelbourg (1954) p.27
  5. American Machinist LXXXI No.12 (June 16, 1937) 481
  6. Seward, William Foote (1924) Binghamton and Broome County, New York: A History, Lewis Historical Publishing, II, 435
  7. "An Accurate Automatic Time Recorder". Scientific American. 66 (25): 386. June 18, 1892. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican06181892-386. Retrieved March 2, 2018.
  8. Aswad (2005) p.11
  9. "The Manufacturer and Builder". XXII. Western. 1890. Retrieved March 2, 2018 – via Google Books. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  10. The Office, Volumes 10-12, Sept 1892
  11. Engelbourg (1954) p.35-36
  12. Kane, Joseph N., Famous First Facts, Wilson, 1950, p.457
  13. "International Dial Time Recorder Clock". americanhistory.si.edu. National Museum of American History. Retrieved March 2, 2018.
  14. "Machine Methods of Accounting, Section 1, IBM, 1930s
  15. "The 'Rochester' System of Time Recording", Scientific American, v.79.26 (December 24, 1898) p.404
  16. Willard & Frick Manufacturing Company (1898). Rochester Time Clocks. p. 6.
  17. "George W. Fairchild". IBM Archives > Exhibits > IBM's chairmen. IBM. January 23, 2003. Retrieved February 14, 2014.
  18. Aswad (2005) p.12
  19. The Railway Age, Oct 7, 1898, p.743
  20. Engelbourg (1954) p.33
  21. Engineering Magazine v.16 Oct 1898-Mar 1899 p.43 (Google p.1095)
  22. Acts of the Legislature of West Virginia: The Accurate Time Stamp Company change of name to The Standard Time Stamp Company, Feb 5, 1894
  23. Moody's Manual of Corporation Securities, 1904, p.1439
  24. Sobel, Robert (1981) IBM: Colossus in Transition, Times Books, p.11
  25. Commercial and Financial Chronicle, LXXXIV, No. 2171 (February 2, 1907), 274
  26. Engelbourg (1954) p.35
  27. IBM Archives: 1901.
  28. Oechsle & Boyce
  29. "Adding-Listing Machines". www.officemuseum.com. Early Office Museum. Retrieved March 2, 2018.
  30. Binghamton Press September 14, 1904 New Adding Machine of Bundy Company
  31. Binghamton Press November 26, 1904 Description of Great Machine
  32. Engelbourg (1954) p.40
  33. This photo, labeled Bundy Adding Machine Co. and International Time Recording Co., Endicott, N.Y. shows the two companies side-by-side in Endicott. Bundy Adding Machine Co. is an error, it is the Bundy Manufacturing Company whose product is an adding machine.
  34. Moody's Manual of Railroads and Corporation Securities, 1921, I, 1298
  35. Aswad (2005) p.18
  36. Engelbourg (1954) p.36
  37. Flint, Charles R. (1923). Memories of an Active Life: Men, and Ships, and Sealing Wax. G.P. Putnam's Sons. p. 312.
  38. Bennett, Frank P.; Company (June 17, 1911). United States Investor. Vol. 22, Part 2. p. 1298 (26).
  39. Moody's Manual of Railroad and Corporation Securities, 1912, p.3044
  40. For example, the last page of The Inventory Simplified Archived 2013-10-04 at the Wayback Machine, published in 1923, identifies the publisher as "The Tabulating Machine Company - Division of - International Business Machines Corporation.
  41. Rodgers, Williams (1969). THINK. Stein and Day. p. 83. ISBN 0812812263.
  42. New York Times, July 15, 1933 - Units of Business Machines Join Parent Company
  43. IBM Archives: Text of IBM's October 24, 1958 press release announcing the sale of its time equipment (clocks, et al.) business to Simplex Time Recorder Company.

Further reading
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.