Time clock's history
No need for a them
At first payroll clocks were unneeded. People were paid a dollar a day and worked from sun-up to sun-down.
In the summer people worked longer hours and in the winter shorter. Since the time worked was fixed at a day
recording the hours worked was unnecessary.
The necessity
During the industrial revolution people started to work in factories. In a factory the work day is more fixed. More and more people were paid by the hour rather than by the day. With the shift to hourly wages came the need for timecards to keep track of when someone worked. A time clock protects the owner by making sure that each employee works the number of hours they said they did. Time clocks also protect the employees by providing an official version of the hours they worked on a timecard. This makes it harder for employers to cheat them out of wages.Edison's clock
The photo on this page is of Edison's time clock. After Edison died the time he last clocked out was etched into the time clock, and later painted on. It now always reads 7:10 am.Back to time clocks
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