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.
Characteristics
The design of a cuckoo clock is now conventional. Most are made in the "traditional style" (also known as "carved") or "chalet" to hang on a wall. In the "traditional style" the wooden case is decorated with carved leaves and animals. Most now have an automaton of the bird that appears through a small trap door while the clock is striking. The bird is often made to move while the clock strikes, typically by means of an arm that lifts the back of the carving.
There are two kinds of movements: one-day (30-hour) and eight-day movements. Some have musical movements, and play a tune on a Swiss music box after striking the hours and half-hours. Usually the melody sounds only at full hours in eight-day clocks and both at full and half hours in one-day clocks. Musical cuckoo clocks frequently have other automata which move when the music box plays. Today's cuckoo clocks are almost always weight driven, though a very few are spring driven. The weights are made of cast iron in a pine cone shape and the "cuc-koo" sound is created by two tiny gedackt (pipes) in the clock, with bellows attached to their tops. The clock's movement activates the bellows to send a puff of air into each pipe alternately when the clock strikes.
In recent years, quartz battery-powered cuckoo clocks have been available. As on mechanical cuckoo clocks, the cuckoo bird emerges from its enclosure and moves up and down, on some quartz clocks it also flaps its wings as it calls, but instead of the call being reproduced by the traditional bellows, the call is a digital recording of a cuckoo calling in the wild (with a corresponding echo). The cuckoo call is usually accompanied by the sound of a water fall and other bird call in the background. During the cuckoo call the double doors open and the cuckoo emerges as usual, but only at the full hour, and they do not have a gong wire.
In musical quartz clocks, the hourly chime is followed by the replay of one of twelve popular melodies (one for each hour). Some musical quartz clocks also reproduce many of the popular automata found on mechanical musical clocks, such as beer drinkers, wood choppers, jumping deer, and angry wives beating lazy husbands. One thing that is unique about the quartz cuckoo clocks is that they include a light sensor, so that when the lights are turned off at night, they automatically silence the hourly chime. The weights are conventionally cast in the shape of pine cones made of plastic, as well as the cuckoo bird and hands. The pendulum bob is often another carved leaf. The weights and pendulum are purely ornamental though, as the clock is driven by battery power. As with mechanical cuckoo clocks, the dial is usually small, and typically marked with Roman numerals.
Precedents, clocks with automaton birds
Since antiquity there have been timepieces with an automaton bird. The first one is credited to the Greek mathematician, Ctesibius of Alexandria (ca.285-222 BC), who in the second century B. C. "used water to sound a whistle and make a model owl move. He had invented the world's first "cuckoo" clock".[1] Ctesibius may indeed lay claim to the first known "singing" clock which could be considered the ancestor of the modern cuckoo clocks.[2]
Later, in the Middle Ages, in 797 (or possibly 801), the caliph of Baghdad, Harun al-Rashid, presented Charlemagne with an Asian elephant named Abul-Abbas and a mechanical clock, out of which came a mechanical bird to announce the hours.[3] The maker of this clock remains unknown.
On the other hand, the elephant clock, invented by the Arab inventor Al-Jazari, featured a humanoid automaton in the form of a mahout striking a cymbal and a mechanical bird chirping after every hour or half-hour.
Finally, in Europe during the Late Middle Ages and later, roosters were used to call the hours in some clocks, like the first astronomical clock in Strasbourg Cathedral.
History
The first modern cuckoo clocks
In 1629, many decades before clockmaking was established in the Black Forest,[4] an Augsburg nobleman by the name of Philipp Hainhofer (1578–1647) penned the first known description of a modern cuckoo clock.[5] The clock belonged to Prince Elector August von Sachsen.
In a widely known handbook on music, Musurgia Universalis (1650), the scholar Athanasius Kircher describes a mechanical organ with several automated figures, including a mechanical cuckoo. This book contains the first documented description -in words and pictures- of how a mechanical cuckoo works.[6] We must assume that Kircher did not invent the cuckoo mechanism, because this book, like his other works, is a compilation of known facts into a handbook for reference purposes. The engraving clearly shows all the elements of a mechanical cuckoo. The bird automatically opens its beak and moves both its wings and tail. Simultaneously, we hear the whistle - call of the cuckoo, created by two whistles of organ pipes, tuned to a minor or major third. There is only one fundamental difference from the Black Forest-type cuckoo mechanism: The functions of Kircher's bird are not governed by a count wheel in a strike train, but a pinned program barrel synchronizes the movements and sounds of the bird.
In 1669 Domenico Martinelli, in his handbook on elementary clocks "Horologi Elementari", suggests using the call of the cuckoo to indicate the hours.[7] 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 feasible to have the cuckoo announce the hours.
Subsequently, cuckoo clocks appeared in regions that had not been known for their clockmaking. For instance, the Historische Nachrichten (1713), an anonymous publication generally attributed to Court Preacher Bartholomäus Holzfuss, mentions a musical clock in the Oranienburg palace in Berlin. This clock, originating in West Prussia, played eight church hymns and had a cuckoo that announced the quarter hours.[8] Unfortunately this clock, like the one mentioned by Hainhofer in 1629, can no longer be traced today.[9]
A few decades later, people in the Black Forest started to build cuckoo clocks.
The first cuckoo clocks made in the Black Forest
It is not clear who built the first cuckoo clocks in the Black Forest[10] but there is unanimity that the unusual clock with the bird call very quickly conquered the region. Already by the middle of the eighteenth century, several small clockmaking shops produced cuckoo clocks with wooden gears. So the first Black Forest cuckoo clocks were created between 1740 and 1750. They had hand-painted shields.
It is hard to judge how large the proportion of cuckoo clocks was among the total production of modern movement Black Forest clocks. Based on the proportions of pieces surviving to the present, it must have been a small fraction of the total production.[11]
About its murky origins, there are two main fables from the first two chroniclers of Black Forest horology which tell contradicting stories about the origin of the cuckoo clock:
The first is from Father Franz Steyrer, written in his "Geschichte der Schwarzwälder Uhrmacherkunst" (History of Clockmaking in the Black Forest) in 1796. He describes a meeting between two clock peddlers from Furtwangen (a town in the Black Forest) who met a travelling Bohemian merchant who sold wooden cuckoo clocks. Both the Furtwangen traders were so excited that they bought one. On bringing it home they copied it and showed their imitation to other Black Forest clock traders. Its popularity grew in the region and more and more clockmakers started producing them. With regard to this chronicle, the historian Adolf Kistner claimed in his book "Die Schwarzwälder Uhr" (The Black Forest Clock) published in 1927, that there is not any Bohemian cuckoo clock in existence to verify the thesis that this clock was used as a sample to copy and produce Black Forest cuckoo clocks. Bohemia had no fundamental clockmaking industry during this period.
The second story is related by another priest, Markus Fidelis Jäck, in a passage from his report "Darstellungen aus der Industrie und des Verkehrs aus dem Schwarzwald" (Description of Industry and Commerce of the Black Forest), (1810): "The cuckoo clock was invented (in 1730) by a clock-master (Franz Anton Ketterer) from Schönwald (Black Forest). This craftsman adorned a clock with a moving bird that announced the hour with the cuckoo-call. The clock-master got the idea of how to make the cuckoo-call from the bellows of a church organ". As time went on, the second version became the more popular, and is the one generally related today. Unfortunately, neither Steyrer nor Jäck quote any sources for their claims, making them unverifiable.
On the other hand R. Dorer pointed out, in 1948, that Franz Anton Ketterer (1734–1806) could not have been the inventor of the cuckoo clock in 1730 because he hadn't then been born. Gerd Bender in the most recent edition of the first volume of his work "Die Uhrenmacher des hohen Schwarzwaldes und ihre Werke" (The Clockmakers of the High Black Forest and their Works) (1998) wrote that the cuckoo clock was not native to the Black Forest and also stated that: "There are no traces of the first production line of cuckoo clocks made by Ketterer". Schaaf in "Schwarzwalduhren" (Black Forest Clocks) (1995), provides his own research which leads to the earliest cuckoos being in the "Franken-Niederbayern" area (East of Germany), in the direction of Bohemia (a region of the Czech Republic), which he notes, lends credence to the Steyrer version.
The legend that the cuckoo clock was invented by a clever Black Forest mechanic in 1730 (Franz Anton Ketterer) keeps being told over and over again. But all of this is not true.[12] The cuckoo clock is much older than clockmaking in the Black Forest. As early as 1650 the bird with the distinctive call was part of the reference book knowledge recorded in handbooks. It took nearly a century for the cuckoo clock to find its way to the Black Forest, where for many decades it remained a tiny niche product.
Although the idea of placing a cuckoo bird in a clock did not originate in the Black Forest, it is necessary to emphasize that the cuckoo clock as we know it today, comes from this region located in southwest Germany whose tradition of clockmaking started in the late seventeenth century. The Black Forest people who created the cuckoo clock industry developed it, and still come up with new designs and technical improvements which have made the cuckoo clock a valued work of art all over the world. The cuckoo clock history is linked to the Black Forest.
Even though the functionality of the cuckoo mechanism has remained basically unchanged, the appearance has changed as case designs and clock movements evolved in the region. In the beginning of the 19th century the now traditional Black Forest clock design, the "Schilduhr" (Shield-clock), was characterized by having a painted flat square wooden face behind which all the clockwork was attached. On top of the square was usually a semicircle of highly decorated painted wood which contained the door for the cuckoo. These usually depicted floral patterns (so-called “Rosenuhren”) and often had a painted column, on either side of the chapter ring, others were decorated with illustrations of fruit as well. Some clocks also bore the names of the bride and bridegroom on the dial, which were normally painted by women.[13] There was no cabinet surrounding the clockwork in this model. This design was the most prevalent between the end of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century. These clocks were typically sold from door to door by "Uhrenträger" (Clock-peddlers) who would carry the dials and movements on their backs displayed on huge backpacks.
About the middle of the nineteenth century till the 1870s, cuckoo clocks were also manufactured in the Black Forest type of clock known as "Rahmenuhr" (Framed-clock). As the name suggests, these scarce cuckoo clocks consisted of a picture frame, usually with a typical Black Forest scene painted on a wooden background or a sheet metal, lithography and screen-printing were other techniques used. Other common themes depicted were; hunting, love, family, death, birth, mythology, military and Christian religious scenes. Works by painters such as Johann Baptist Laule (1817–1895) and Carl Heine (1842–1882) were used to decorate the fronts of this and other types of clocks. The painting was almost always protected by a glass and some models displayed a person or an animal with blinking or flirty eyes as well, being operated by a simple mechanism worked by means of the pendulum swinging. Most of them were wall clocks but a few were mantel clocks. The cuckoo normally took part in the scene painted, and would pop out in 3D, as usual, to announce the hour.
From the 1860s until the twenties, and according to the decorative tastes prevailing in each moment, cuckoo clock cases were manufactured following different styles then in vogue such as; Biedermier (some models also included a painting of a person or animal with moving eyes), Neoclassical, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Art Nouveau, etc. These timepieces, based both on architectural and home decorative styles, are rarer than the popular ones looking like gatekeeper-houses (Bahnhäusle style clocks) and they could be mantel, wall or bracket clocks.
But the popular house-shaped Bahnhäusleuhr (Railroad house clock) virtually forced the discontinuation of other designs within a few years.
1850 – The Bahnhäusle clock, a design of the century from Furtwangen
In September 1850, the first director of the Grand Duchy of Baden Clockmakers School in Furtwangen, Robert Gerwig, launched a public competition to submit designs for modern clockcases, which would allow homemade products to attain a professional appearance.
Friedrich Eisenlohr (1805–1854), who as an architect had been responsible for creating the buildings along the then new and first Badenian Rhine valley railroad, submitted the most far-reaching design.[14] Eisenlohr enhanced the facade of a standard railroad-guard’s residence, as he had built many of them, with a clock dial. His "Wallclock with shield decorated by ivy vines," (in reality the ornament were grapevines and not ivy) as it is referred to in a surviving, handwritten report from the Clockmakers School from 1851 or 1852, became the prototype of today’s popular Souvenir cuckoo clocks.
Eisenlohr was also up-to-date stylistically. He was inspired by local images; rather than copying them slavishly, he modified them. Contrary to most present-day cuckoo clocks, his case features light, unstained wood and were decorated with symmetrical, flat fretwork ornaments.
Eisenlohr's idea became an instant hit, because the modern design of the Bahnhäusle clock appealed to the decorating tastes of the growing bourgeoisie and thereby tapped into new and growing markets.
While the Clockmakers School was satisfied to have Eisenlohr’s clock case sketches, they were not fully realized in their original form. Eisenlohr had proposed a wooden facade; Gerwig preferred a painted metal front combined with an enamel dial. But despite intensive campaigns by the Clockmakers School, sheet metal fronts decorated with oil paintings (or coloured litographs) never became a major market segment in the Black Forest because of the high cost and labour-intensive process,[15] hence only a few were produced (from the 1850s until around 1870) and are nowadays sought-after collector pieces.
Characteristically, the makers of the first Bahnhäusle clocks deviated from Eisenlohr's sketch in only one way: they left out the cuckoo mechanism. Unlike today, the design with the little house was not synonymous with a cuckoo clock in the first years after 1850. This is another indication that at that time cuckoo clocks could not have been an important market segment.[15]
Only in December 1854, Johann Baptist Beha, the best known maker of cuckoo clocks of his time, sold two cuckoo clocks, with oil paintings on their fronts, to the Furtwangen clock dealer Gordian Hettich, which were described as Bahnhöfle Uhren ("Railroad station clocks").[16] More than a year later, on January 20, 1856, another respected Furtwangen-based cuckoo clockmaker, Theodor Ketterer, sold one to Joseph Ruff in Glasgow (Scotland, United Kingdom).
Concurrently with Beha and Ketterer, other Black Forest clockmakers must have started to equip Bahnhäusle clocks with cuckoo mechanisms to satisfy the rapidly growing demand for this type of clock. Starting in the mid-1850s there was a real boom in this market.
By 1860, the Bahnhäusle style had started to develop away from its original, “severe” graphic form, and evolve, among other designs, toward the well-known case with three-dimensional woodcarvings, like the Jagdstück ("Hunt piece", design created in Furtwangen in 1861), a cuckoo clock with carved oak foliage and hunting motives, such as trophy animals, guns and powder pouches.[17]
By 1862 the reputed clockmaker Johann Baptist Beha, started to enhance his richly decorated Bahnhäusle clocks with hands carved from bone and weights cast in the shape of fir cones.[18] Even today this combination of elements is characteristic for cuckoo clocks, although the hands are usually made of wood or plastic, white celluloid was employed in the past too. As for the weights, there was during this second half of the nineteenth century, a few models which featured curious weights cast in the shape of a Gnome.
Only ten years after its invention by Friedrich Eisenlohr, all variations of the house-theme had reached maturity.
There were also Bahnhäusle clocks and its derived manufactured as mantel clocks but not as many as the wall versions.
The basic cuckoo clock of today is the railway-house (Bahnhäusle) form, still with its rich ornamentation, and these are known under the name of "traditional" (or carved); which display carved leaves, birds, deer heads (like the Jagdstück design), other animals, etc. The richly decorated Bahnhäusle clocks have become a symbol of the Black Forest that is instantly understood anywhere in the world.
Even today it is a favourite souvenir of travelers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The centre of production continues to be the Black Forest region of Germany, in the area of Schonach and Titisee-Neustadt, where there are several dozen firms making the whole clock or parts of it.
The cuckoo clock became successful and world famous after Friedrich Eisenlohr contributed the Bahnhäusle design to the 1850 competition at the Furtwangen Clockmakers School.[12]
The "Chalet" style, the Swiss contribution
The "Chalet" style originated at the end of the nineteenth century in Switzerland, at that time they were highly valued as Swiss souvenirs.
There are currently three basic styles, according to the different traditional houses depicted: Black Forest chalet, Swiss chalet (with two types the "Brienz" and the "Emmental") and finally the Bavarian chalet. Commonly found in the latter type of clock, is the incorporation of a Swiss music box, the most popular melodies are "The Happy Wanderer" and "Edelweiss" which sound alternately. Along with the common projecting cuckoo bird, this style of clock may also display other types of animated figurines as well, examples include woodcutters, moving beer drinkers and turning water wheels. Some "traditional" style cuckoo clocks feature a music box and dancing figurines as well.
Contemporary design
Nowadays certain cuckoo clocks are manufactured inspired by contemporary decorative styles, as much in Germany as in other countries, especially Italy. These modern clocks are characterized by its functionalist, minimalist and schematic design.
One of the most usual models presents the silhouette of the typical cuckoo clock with deer head, a bird, or the chalet type but, generally, without any sort of three dimensional woodwork, they only have a flat surface with a gap, or a little door, from which the bird pops out as usual. They are commonly painted in a monochrome way using different tones such as white, black, loud colours, etc.
Likewise there are other avant-garde designs with geometric shapes, such as rhombuses, squares, cubes, circles, rectangles, ovals, etc. Also without carving, these clocks are flat and smooth. Some are painted in a single colour while others are polychromes with abstract or figurative paintings, geometric shapes, multicolour lines and stripes, etc.
The Black Forest also continues to reinvent their regional treasure with modern cuckoo clocks. There are a group of artists producing individual and high-design cuckoo clocks under the "Romba" name. These models include minimalist, industrial, and naturalist designs, as well as intricate fretwork and hand-painted pieces.
The Black Forest "Green City" exhibition at the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai featured some of these modern Black Forest cuckoo clocks.
Some are quartz and some mechanical.
Records
At the Cuckooland Museum, in the United Kingdom, is located what is considered the world's largest and finest collection of antique cuckoo clocks.[19]
Of the biggest cuckoo clocks in the world, four of them are located in the Black Forest of Germany; in Höllsteig (Breitnau), Niederwasser (Hornberg), Schonach and Schonachbach (Triberg). Another one is located in central Germany, specifically in Gernrode (where the "World's Largest Chocolate Cuckoo Clock" was made in 2006) and finally two of them are situated in the west of the country; in Sankt Goar where the world's largest free-hanging cuckoo clock is located and in Wiesbaden.
In America four of them exist as well, one is placed in the United States, in Wilmot, Ohio, the other three are in Eduardo Castex, Villa Carlos Paz and La Falda, Argentina.
Lastly in Japan, on the island of Hokkaidō, there is another one in Onneyu. Some of them have been awarded with the title of "World's Largest Cuckoo Clock" by the Guinness World Records.
As for the largest indoor cuckoo clocks, in 1986 the now-defunct manufacturer Dold built a custom clock for Champ's Clock Shop in Douglasville, Georgia, a bit smaller is the one currently manufactured by the Anton Schneider company. The smallest cuckoo clock in the world is made by the firm Hubert Herr.
Bibliography
- Schneider, Wilhelm (1985): "Zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Kuckucksuhr." In: Alte Uhren, Fascicle 3, pp. 13 – 21.
- Schneider, Wilhelm (1987): "Frühe Kuckucksuhren von Johann Baptist Beha in Eisenbach im Hochschwarzwald. In: Uhren, Fascicle 3, pp. 45 – 53.
- Mühe, Richard, Kahlert, Helmut and Techen, "Beatrice" (1988): Kuckucksuhren. München.
- Schneider, Wilhelm (1988): "The Cuckoo Clocks of Johann Baptist Beha." In: Antiquarian Horology, Vol. 17, pp. 455 – 462.
- Schneider, Wilhelm, Schneider, Monika (1988): "Black Forest Cuckoo Clocks at the Exhibitions in Philadelphia 1876 and Chicago 1893". In: NAWCC, Vol. 30/2, No. 253, pp. 116 – 127 & pp. 128 – 132.
- Schneider, Wilhelm (1989): "Die eiserne Kuckucksuhr." In: Uhren, 12. Jg., Fascicle 5, pp. 37 – 44.
- Kahlert, Helmut (2002): "Erinnerung an ein geniales Design. 150 Jahre Bahnhäusle-Uhren" In: Klassik-Uhren, F. 4, pp. 26 – 30.
- Graf, Johannes (2006): "The Black Forest Cuckoo Clock. A Success Story." In: NAWCC December Bulletin, pp. 646 – 652.
See also
Cuckoo Clock manufacturers
In alphabetical order:
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External links
- Cuckooland Museum, the only museum in the world dedicated to the cuckoo clock
- Cuckooland museum 1 & C. M. 2, two videos about the collection.
- German Cuckoo clocks
- A private collection of Antique Black Forest Clocks
- National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors (USA)
- Ctesibius mechanical clocks, including the first singing bird clock known
Notes
 | Constructs such as ibid., loc. cit. and idem are discouraged by Wikipedia's style guide for footnotes, as they are easily broken. Please improve this article by replacing them with named references (quick guide), or an abbreviated title. (July 2010) |
- ^ This "first cuckoo clock" was further stated and described in the 2007 book The Rise and Fall of Alexandria: Birthplace of the Modern World by Justin Pollard and Howard Reid on page 132: "Soon Ctesibius's clocks were smothered in stopcocks and valves, controlling a host of devices from bells to puppets to mechanical doves that sang to mark the passing of each hour - the very first cuckoo clock!"
- ^ From the Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography (2008) we find this statement: "...his (Ctesibius') water clock has been superseded by the pendulum clock, but his parerga (a short tune or song) still survive in the cuckoo clock."
- ^ Gene W. Heck When worlds collide: exploring the ideological and political foundations of the clash of civilizations Rowman & Littlefield, 2007 ISBN 0-7425-5856-8, p. 172 Google Books Search
- ^ For the early history of Black Forest clockmaking, see Gerd Bender, "Die Uhrenmacher des hohen Schwarzwaldes und ihre Werke". Vol. 1 (Villingen, 1975): pp. 1-10.
- ^ Johannes Graf, The Black Forest Cuckoo Clock. A Success Story. NAWCC Bulletin, December 2006: p. 646.
- ^ Athanasius Kircher, Musurgia Universalis sive Ars magna consoni & dissoni, 2 Vol (Rome, 1650), here Vol. 2, p. 343f and Plate XXI.
- ^ Domenico Martinelli, Horologi Elementari (Venezia, 1669): p. 112.
- ^ Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz. Document No.:"I.HA, Rep. 36, Nr. 3048, fol. 21f": "In another room, where the Dutch porcelain is kept, is a singing clock, which was made by a farmer in Kaschuben, which plays eight hymns; but the quarter hours are called out by a cuckoo". See also Claudia Sommer, Schloss Oranienburg. Ein Inventar aus dem Jahre 1743, p. 151, where there is also a reference to a currently missing inventory of 1709. The inventory of 1702 does not yet list this clock; therefore, it is probable that it reached Oranienburg between 1702 and 1709, Verwaltung der Märkischen Schlösser).
- ^ It remains doubtful which is the oldest cuckoo clock before the bird made its appearance in the Black Forest. Again and again old iron or wooden clock movements are discovered, which have automated cuckoos that possibly predate the first wooden movement cuckoo clocks from the B. F. (See also Wilhelm Schneider, "Die eiserne Kuckucksuhr" (The Iron Movement Cuckoo Clock), Alte Uhren und Moderne Zeitmessung, No. 5 (1989): pp. 37-44).
- ^ Also refer to the discussion on the origin of the Black Forest cuckoo clock to: Richard Mühe, Helmut Kahlert and Beatrice Techen, Kuckucksuhren (München, 1988): pp. 7-14.
- ^ Helmut Kahlert, Die Kuckucksuhren-Saga, Alte Uhren, No. 4 (1983): pp. 347-353; here p. 349.
- ^ a b Johannes Graf, The Black Forest Cuckoo Clock. A Success Story. In: NAWCC Bulletin, December 2006: p. 651.
- ^ Pier Van Leeuwen, Clocks from the Black Forest (1740-1900) (2005): in the Museum of the Dutch Clock website
- ^ The credit for first discovering Eisenlohr's original design goes to Herbert Jüttemann. See Herbert Jüttemann, Die Schwarzwalduhr, 4th ed. (Karlsruhe, 2000): p. 242.
- ^ a b Johannes Graf, The Black Forest Cuckoo Clock. A Success Story. In: NAWCC Bulletin, December 2006: p. 649.
- ^ Citation based on Wilhelm Schneider "Frühe Kuckucksuhren von Johann Baptist Beha aus Eisenbach im Hochschwarzwald" (Remembering the design of a genius. 150 years of Bahnhaeusle clocks), Alte Uhren und moderne Zeitmessung, No. 3 (1987): pp. 45-53, here p. 51.
- ^ Ibid. Within a short time more orders for hunt pieces are recorded, specifically on October 30, November 7 and November 26, 1861.
- ^ As per Wilhelm Schneider, who had a chance to examine the account books of Beha. See Wilhelm Schneider, "Frühe Kuckucksuhren von Johann Baptist aus Eisenbach im Hochschwarzwald" (Early cuckoo clocks by Johann Baptist Beha of Eisenbach in the high Black Forest). Alte Uhren und moderne Zeitmessung. No 3 (1987): pp. 45-53, here p. 52.
- ^ Times Online article; Time for a change: to 600 antique cuckoo clocks