So, rather than having the classic oversized bell or double-bell on top of the unit (to smash with your palm at 6am), the ringing mechanism was housed inside the back of the case, and a big winding key occupied the summit. They were officially America’s preferred wake-up call provider.īoth the Big and Baby Bens were housed in a newly refined “bell-back” clock case. Selling for $2.50 in the years before World War I (or about $60 in modern money), the 5-inch diameter Big Ben and its half-pint cousin the “Baby Ben” combined to move over 900,000 units in just 1913 alone, and the Western Clock MFG Company-not yet officially known as Westclox-was producing more than twice that many clocks annually in total. Within in another ten years, the workforce had tripled again, powered by employee George Kern’s 1908 invention of the first “Big Ben”-the sleek, iconic model that basically set the template for the 20th century wind-up alarm clock. The new company tripled in size by the turn of the century, employing 232 people at its growing Peru plant (145 men, 73 women, 14 children) and producing 500,000 clocks annually. It’s basically all forward momentum from here. Company in 1888 and installing another talented German, Ernst Roth, as the general manager. Matthiessen, who owns the powerful Illinois Zinc Company and most other things in Peru / LaSalle, decides to swoop in and save Stahlberg’s little clock business, incorporating it as the Western Clock Mfg. Luckily for Charles, however, he is living in the same small town as Frederick William Matthiessen-a fellow German, but one with a hell of a lot more money and business experience. Stahlberg’s company goes bankrupt not once, but twice, within its first several years. The pioneering spirit is there, but the business skills soon appear lacking. Stahlberg knows that no other noteworthy clock company has ever succeeded west of the Hudson, let alone smalltown Illinois, but he dives into the challenge, establishing his first factory.

Like many East Coasters, he decides to pursue his fortune out West, but unlike many of his peers, he skips the bustling Second City in favor of a promising river & railroad region downstate where the towns of Peru, LaSalle and Ottawa intersect. The story begins with a Connecticut clockmaker named Charles Stahlberg getting a patent for a new alarm clock design in 1885. is even more impressive considering the company didn’t have all the resources of an established, major metropolis to draw from. In some respects, the early rise of the Western Clock MFG Co. wasn’t born in Chicago or headquartered here, the immediate aftershocks of the company’s cultural and industrial impact certainly reached our shores in a hurry, no interstate required.

Above all else, though, the rise and fall of Westclox-and the deeper history of these Big Ben clocks, in particular-is simply far too intriguing to dismiss just because of a long-distance commute. Well, the company certainly maintained some major salesrooms here, and many of their employees came from the city and its suburbs. So, does Westclox really belong in the Made In Chicago Museum? Even today, with the considerable help of a thing called Interstate 80, it’s still about a two-hour journey from LaSalle Street to LaSalle County. Located at 41.3275° N, 89.1290° W on the map, the company’s former plant is admittedly on the absolute fringes of what would typically be designated “Chicagoland” turf. Unfortunately, they also hint at a tragic chapter in American industrial history, when the appeal of a “luminous” new kind of paint wound up putting hundreds of workers-mostly young women-at great personal risk.īefore we get to that, though, we have to start with the issue of geography as it concerns the business in question.įor at least four generations, the Western Clock Manufacturing Company, aka Westclox, was the lifeblood and largest employer in the small town of Peru, Illinois (with a mailing address in its twin city of LaSalle). Purchased from a man who claimed to have salvaged them from the backroom of an unnamed Chicago watch repair shop, each round and weathered face represents the lasting work of an international manufacturing giant at the peak of its powers. Made By: Western Clock MFG Company, aka Westclox, 350 5th St., Peru, Illinois Ī clock without hands might seem indifferent to the passage of time, but these old “Big Ben” and “Baby Ben” dials have some serious stories to tell. Museum Artifacts: Luminous “Big Ben” & “Baby Ben” Clock Dials (1940s) and Style 1A “Big Ben” Alarm Clock (1920s)

Westclox big ben