About This Site

Mitchell Janoff - Collector and Horologist

Mitchell Janoff has been collecting and restoring master clocks, slave clocks, and precision frequency standards for over ten years. His passion lies in the intersection of timekeeping and time distribution -- the systems that once kept entire cities synchronized to a single, accurate source of time.

The Collection

This site showcases a broad collection of horological and electronic timekeeping artifacts, ranging from early twentieth-century electromechanical master clocks to Cold War-era cesium beam frequency standards. The collection includes pieces from some of the most important manufacturers in the history of American timekeeping:

• Telechron -- Makers of the synchronous electric clock, founded by Henry Ellis Warren, whose inventions revolutionized how clocks kept time by locking them to the 60 Hz power grid.
• Self Winding Clock Company of New York (SWCC) -- The company that partnered with Western Union to distribute Naval Observatory time to businesses and public spaces across the United States.
• Synchronome -- The British firm whose free-pendulum master clocks set the standard for precision timekeeping in observatories and institutions worldwide.
• IBM, Standard Electric, E. Howard, Stromberg -- Additional manufacturers whose master clocks played critical roles in institutional and industrial timekeeping.

Beyond clocks, the collection extends into precision frequency standards, including Hewlett-Packard GPS-disciplined oscillators, cesium beam standards, and a complete time and frequency measurement rack.

Purpose of This Site

This site serves as a reference and gallery for fellow collectors, horologists, and anyone interested in the history of timekeeping and time distribution. Every piece in this collection tells a story about how society organized itself around accurate time -- from the telegraph-era Western Union time service to modern GPS-disciplined atomic clocks.

All clocks in the SWCC collection are fully operational and receive hourly synchronization signals from a computer-based master clock system, recreating the original Western Union time distribution network within a single household. Details of this synchronization system were published in the June 1995 Bulletin of the National Watch and Clock Collectors Association (NAWCC).

Contact

Mitchell Janoff can be reached at [email protected].