Cuckoo clock with hunting theme, Black Forest, circa 1900
The first cuckoo clock
The origins of cuckoo clocks are obscure; in 1619 a cuckoo clock was mentioned in the inventory of the prince of August in Saxony in Dresden, and in 1650 Athanasius Kircher described a mechanical organ clock with moving dolls and a mechanical cuckoo in his music manual "Musurgia Universalis" describes a mechanical organ clock with a movable couple and a mechanical cuckoo. When it makes a cuckoo call, the cuckoo automatically opens its beak, flaps its wings and shakes its tail. The cuckoo's call is emitted by two windchests that are tuned to the third note of either major or minor, respectively. Domenico? Martinelli (Domenico Martinelli) suggested in his 1669 book Elementary Clocks that the cuckoo's call could be used to indicate time. It was at this point that the use of the cuckoo mechanism in clocks finally became widely known.
Cuckoo mechanism (Kocher [Kircher]: Musurgia Universalis, 1650)
The first cuckoo clock in the Black
Forest Until today, we still don't know who started making cuckoo clocks in the Black Forest. Even the first two historians who wrote about the making of clocks in the Black Forest had different opinions on the subject. in 1810, Marcus Fiderius, the first cuckoo clock to be made in the Black Forest, was a cuckoo clock. Fidelius Jack Jack (Markus Fidelius Jack) claimed that Franz Anton Ketterer of Schonwald was the first to make cuckoo clocks from the 1830s. On the other hand, Franz Steyrer, in his book Geschichte der Uhrmacherkunst (Art History of the Clockmaker), reported in 1796 claiming that Michael Dilger, in Neukirch and Matthaus Hummel Matthaus Hummel began making cuckoo clocks in 1742.
The oldest known Black Forest cuckoo clock, circa 1780-90.
In the 19th century, we can still find cuckoo clock mechanisms in varnished shield-type clock faces and picture frame clocks. However, with the advent of the train cabin clock, all other forms of cuckoo clocks were, within a few short years, driven out of the market.
Framed clock with cuckoo, painted by J.B. Laule of the Clock Workshop, made at the Clockmakers' School in Furtwangen, 1860.
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