Short Stuff: Grandfather Clocks

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to Short Stuff, the Very Brief podcast
on Josh. There's Chuck, that's Jerry. Let's get going. No
time for laughing, Chuck. Welcome everybody, And just as a
very quick explanation, Uh, we had this idea because we
often come across cool, little interesting tidbits that certainly don't
warrant a forty five minute episode, and everyone else on

(00:27):
the planet is doing little, shorty episodes on their podcast,
and we thought, well, hey, in your tin, why don't
we give it a shot. Yeah, let's try something new
for once. Yeah, so I hope you all like it. Great. Well,
we've just wasted a lot of time, Chuck. We might
not get to the end of this episode. Now. I
thought we agreed there was no ticking clock. So you've
seen a grandfather clock before, right? Uh? Yeah, we we had,

(00:50):
you know, not the what is the like the smaller
version called it hangs on the wall. Actually I saw
those called wagon the wall clocks. Those are the original ones. Okay,
we we had one of those growing up where it's
just like an exposed pendulum swinging back and forth. Yeah,
you know, three ish feet three feet in length. Yeah, okay,
I thought you met like off the wall, like that

(01:12):
sounds dangerous, rigged up a hovering mechanism. It was pretty advanced, right,
and the pendulum was super sharp, so you better watch out.
So um, but you're you're familiar with like the kind
that are tall and standing on the floor. Yeah, so
those are actually you know and you know and love
them as grandfather clocks. Sure, but the name grandfather clock

(01:33):
didn't come around until about two hundred years after grandfather
clocks were invented. Yeah, and it's funny when I saw
this that they they were invented about three d fifty
years ago, and when I saw that they were originally
called long case clocks, I immediately would liked that name better,
long case better than grandfather. Okay, yeah, I think it's cool.

(01:53):
I'm ambivalent towards both because I like the I do
like cuckoo clocks for sure, but the the the name
grandfather clock, we'll we'll find out where it came from.
But the grandfather clock itself, or the long case clock,
was actually one of the first clocks. And it kind
of makes sense because if you think about it, when
you start out inventing something new, it's it's huge, it's enormous,

(02:19):
and then as you get better at it over time
and find like workarounds and and shortcuts and stuff, you
can make it smaller and smaller. So it makes sense
that some of the first actually precise clocks were giant
grandfather clocks. And again they were originally they just had
the pendulum swinging back and forth. You could mount him
on the wall. They were called wag on the wall clocks.

(02:40):
And the first person who really tried to invent this
thing was none other than Galileo Galilee. Yeah, he's the
one that discovered, Hey, a pendulum swings at a constant
rate regardless of its size. I think we've got something here, boys.
And unfortunately he died before he could actually make a
legit clock. Yeah, but he tried for like his whole life.

(03:01):
That's what killed him. It was the sharp pendulum, and
he's like, I regret everything. But a Dutch astronomer named
Christian Hugans built the very first pendulum clock. Uh. And
then and this is when like, apparently this is the
most accurate time piece ever in the history of the world. Yeah.

(03:24):
Before that, it was clocks were accurate within fifteen minutes
every twenty four hours. Sure, for the for the early
seventeenth century. But then Hugans comes along and his was
accurate within a minute every twenty four hours. So finally
what he had produced was something that you could actually
use for like scientific purposes, which again, as you said,

(03:47):
it was an astronomer and you need precise clocks for astronomy.
So he kind of made a scientific instrument for himself
more than you know, let's let's make something that everybody
sets their watch too. Yeah, So his wasn't It wasn't
a long case clock though, but because people are um,
people like to invent and build on others work, of

(04:08):
course he's got bigger and bigger, and eventually in London,
uh and what like not even two many years later,
three or four years later, the very first long case
clocks started, like six ft tall, started to be released
into uh for purchase. Yeah, and there was a dude
named Clement, I can't remember his first name, but he
added um. He he basically made the pendulum so precise

(04:31):
that all of a sudden there was a clock that
was accurate within a second over twenty four hours. And
so they added minute hands and second hands and really
started to show off. But at the time in the
late seventeenth early eighteenth centuries, you had to literally be
um royalty to afford a clock like this. And then
over time again they figured out shortcuts and there were

(04:53):
improvements in manufacturing. You just had to be somewhat rich
to afford him. And they started to spread and they
started to kind of encase him in would they They
started really kind of tricking him out and everything. They
made the pendulum look really beautiful, and then what you
know and love as a grandfather clock really kind of
was developed between I think um up to about eighteen fifty.

(05:16):
I think right from the late seventeenth century up to
eighteen fifty. And then that was like kind of the
golden age of the grandfather clock. And then they just
stopped progressing and they said, this is perfect. This is
the Grandfather clock, although we don't call it that yet,
and um, we're going to just leave it as is
and say we're happy with this model. Yeah, so put

(05:37):
a pin in that. And then we switch on over
to the story of a man named Henry clay Work
who was born in Connecticut in eighteen thirty two. He
was a musician, uh singer, songwriter, very emo. From what
I understand a little bit. I got that too, And
it was back in the days when you would write

(05:57):
like war songs. Um, that doesn't happen much today unless
you count like Toby Keith, whatever work he's doing, whatever
good work he's doing. But he was a champion of
the North. And he had a song called Kingdom Coming,
a pro union ballad, which gave him a music contract
with a publishing firm named Root and Katie or Caddie.

(06:19):
And he started pumping out hits over like the next
decade or so until hard times fell. He he made
some bad financial moves. Two of his kids died in
the eighteen seventies, and so his life he kind of
fell on hard times, but he would come back with
a big, big hit called Grandfather's Clock. Right, And this

(06:40):
is actually where the name grandfather Clock comes from, is
from this guy's song. And it's a pretty sweet song,
actually sad. He basically sings about how his grandfather, his
grand his great grandparents bought a long case clock on
the day his grandfather was born. What a great baby gift.
Right Exactly, here you go, kid, maybe someday you'll be

(07:02):
this tall. Here's a grandfather, a long case clock. And
a woobie exactly, don't let it fall on you. But
they so they bought. Yeah, I guess now that you
pointed out as a weird baby gift. But um, it
was a great, sturdy, reliable clock and it worked through
the grandfather's whole life until until the day he died.
And the day that the grandfather died, the clock stopped

(07:25):
as well, and it still hasn't worked since. Yeah, here's
the lyric. My grandfather's clock was too large for the shelf,
so it stood ninety years on the floor. It was
bought on the morn of the day he was born,
and was always his treasure and pride. But it stopped short,
never to go again when the old man died. Yeah,
and America was like, oh God, this is the greatest

(07:46):
song anyone will ever write. We can just stop, we
can stop improving on grandfather clocks, we can stop writing
songs now. And the two come together in the U
in this writing by work or this song by Henry
Clay work. Right. Yeah, it was a big, big hit.
He sold uh close to a million copies, made the
equivalent of about nine dollars on the song. Johnny Cash

(08:08):
would record it Prairie Home Companions spoofed it. I think scrillis.
I'm just kidding. It was in a video game called
Five Nights at Freddie's. Yeah, and if you look it
up in the O E. D. The Oxford English Dictionary,
if you look up grandfather clock, it attributes the etymology
of that term to um to Work, Henry clay Work.

(08:33):
That his name does not stick to the brain. No,
even having Henry clay in it. I know you think
that would do it for us, Yeah, but Henry clay Work,
it just does not stick. So it was a huge deal,
and there's it's pretty much undisputed. I think it's a
percent on disputed that Henry clay Work was the person
who came up with the song that later became the
name for long Case Clock's grandfather Clocks. Right, So we're

(08:56):
gonna take a very short break and we're gonna come
back and tell you about what in bird work to
write that song himself. Alright, Chuck. So that was a

(09:21):
pretty good cliffhanger. So because you think, like sure, Henry
clay Work came up with this song and it had
the effect of renaming the long case clock the grandfather clock.
But anyone, anythinking person's brain is going to keep going
and say, but wait a minute, where did Henry clay
Work get the inspiration for this song? And there's actually

(09:42):
two stories for that. Yeah, so uh. One of them
is there's a hotel called the George Hotel in uh of.
I'm sorry, the full name is the George Hotel of
pierce Bridge in North Yorkshire, England. And they said, and
they still claim, that dude wrote this in the lobby
he stayed here in eighteen seventy four, saw our long

(10:02):
case clock, sat down and started writing a song about it,
because our clock is frozen in time at eleven oh five,
with a uh, with a story that is likely what
I call bs and what others would call folklore. Well,
I don't if if it's not B, yes, then I
would say, yes, these people are. They have the claim
to inspiring the Henry clay Works song because it has

(10:25):
basically the same story. There was a clock bought for
the hotel owners sons um and when the first son died,
the clock started to slow, and when the second son
died it stopped altogether. And if Henry clay Work stayed
at that hotel, heard that story in it's so effactive
it's done. But yes, there is a lot of a
lot of people are like those people are lying, lying

(10:46):
through their teeth, and um there there people in their
town won't speak to them actually because they so detest
the lie. That's right. Uh. And the other version of
the story, of course, has to do with the family.
But his family, his wife's family, Sarah Parker, they said, no, no, no, no, no,
that's we have the clock. Uh. And then he wrote

(11:07):
the song about our clock. And he wrote it because
you know, he married our daughter, and we have this
great long case clock that belonged to Sarah's grandfather. And
it really has nothing to do with um a haunted
clock that stops when people die, right, but it did,
it doesn't work anymore, sure, So you know, there you go.

(11:30):
And then when people ask the family do you have
the clock, they just say yes and then leave it
at that. All right, And there's our story. I've got
one more thing. There's actually, um, there's actually different. So
a grandfather clock is seven feet, a six footer is
called the grandmother clock. Five fter is called the granddaughter clock.

(11:52):
That's cute. So there you go, chuck. And anything shorter
is called you're not even a family member. Clock, that's right.
I guess that's it. Yeah, if you want to find us,
you can find us on the web, and we're both
at stuff you should know dot com. So look us
up and we'll see you next time. Right, that's right.