English Chess Forum

Ever have one of these?

They were common equipment forty to fifty years ago. The German BHB clocks and equivalents are the ones that are still in use today. BH Wood's converted alarm clocks (or at least that's what they look like) mostly gave up the ghost or were insufficiently reliable for club and Congress use.

Our club still has one

Don't think it has actually been used for a while though.

I'm having a house clearout and came across it earlier today. There is no chance of it ever working again.

I always rather liked the even older generation of Chess (Sutton Coldfield) clocks...



According to the page where I found the image, these were made between 1937 and 1948. At a guess, EJH's one up the page dates from the 1950s or early 1960s as the design had been tweaked slightly by the late 1960s and early 1970s, thus...



I still have one of these...



... which still seems to tick cheerfully, though I wouldn't like to say for how long. It's a German* MOM 'Jaeger' clock, probably late 1950s or early 1960s. It has lasted longer than the club which owned it (Mitcham) and was probably being used right up to 1999, when the club closed. * EDIT: probably Hungarian rather than German, according to Bernard Cafferty, who thinks this type of clock entered the country around 1948.

Harrogate had a few which we sold off to members about twenty years ago. I bought one and I may still have it somewhere.

I remember them. One advantage they have over modern (or should I say less ancient) clocks is that the position of the start/stop bar made things awkward for that abominable species the clock-banger!

Hope this works - I'm not used to adding attachments here.

Sadly, the Metroplitan Police Chess Club has had to abandon a wonderful collection of old clocks of the types above and others which were even more eccentric to the modern eye, because of the Met moving out of New Scotland Yard. I suspect they have all gone to landfill by now. I had wondered if they would be of interest to a collector, but I could not find anyone.

I have one of the Sutton Coldfield ones, still in working order, although it is very seldom used these days.