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A Reference Site for UK Mechanical Industrial Time Recorders |
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Simplex
The
Simplex Time Recorder Company was founded in 1894 in Gardner,
Massachusetts, in the USA as a result of a button press time recorder
invention by Edward.G.Watkins.The company successfully manufactured and sold many models throughout the following decades, eventually buying out the IBM Time Division in the USA in 1958 and Gledhill-Brook in the UK in 1964 (Simplex Time Recorder (UK) Ltd).
Very few early models made it over to the UK, but the ones that did were possibly used by USA companies setting up factories here rather than being imported and sold by UK distributors. Some later Gledhill-Brook models were re-badged by Simplex after their take-over in 1964 until its eventual closure in 1980.
Simplex still trade today (2019) selling fire and security products under their Tyco International parent company.
Here are photos of a circa 1915 Simplex 'Job Timer' which I believe was used at the first UK Ford assembly plant at Trafford Park in Manchester which opened in 1911, and later moved to the Dagenham plant in 1931:
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