Bundy: The First Time Clock, Fought Over in Court, Never Trademarked

By Matthew Partsch · Owl and Twig Vintage · October 20, 2026

In 1888 a jeweler in Auburn, New York built a clock that printed the time his own employees walked in the door. The company his invention grew into later sued him, under his own name, in federal court.

A jeweler in Auburn builds a machine

Willard Legrand Bundy was born December 8, 1845, in Otsego, New York. He worked as a jeweler in Auburn, a trade that trained him to think in gears, springs, and ratchets. In 1888 he applied that training to a problem every factory owner had: knowing exactly when each employee walked in.

His solution, patent US 393,205, filed August 3, 1887 and issued November 20, 1888, gave every worker a personal key with a bit cut to a different length. A clock inside the machine drove hour and minute wheels continuously. Turning a key engaged a gear-driven projection matched to that worker's number, releasing a spring-driven platen that stamped the worker's number, the hour, and the minute onto a paper strip through an inked ribbon. No clerk had to watch the door. The machine did it, in ink, automatically.

His brother Harlow E. Bundy, a Hamilton College graduate, incorporated the Bundy Manufacturing Company in 1889 in Binghamton, New York, with eight employees and $150,000 in capital. By 1898 the company had built roughly 9,000 Bundy Time Recorders. In 1899 it acquired the Standard Time Stamp Company, and it kept inventing — Willard patented a refined version of the key recorder in 1891 (US 452,894), assigned directly to the company, and the firm later patented its own adding machine as well.

A rival patents a different machine, eleven months later

Bundy wasn't the only person solving this problem. Alexander Dey spent thirty years as one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools in Scotland, starting in 1873, while living in Glasgow. He patented a time recorder of his own design — US 411,586, filed May 3, 1889 and issued September 24, 1889, barely eleven months after Bundy's patent issued.

The two machines worked differently. Instead of a personally-cut key, each employee set indicator dials to their own assigned number, then pulled a lever. The lever printed the employee's number and the time onto an inked ribbon, with a star marking "out" entries to distinguish them from "in" entries. Collectors still call this family of machines "dial recorders," distinct from Bundy's "key recorders," and the distinction matters for dating a piece: the two mechanisms never fully merged, even after the companies that made them did.

Dey and his brother John formed the Dey Patents Company in Syracuse, New York in 1893, while Alexander still lived in Glasgow; it became the Dey Time Register Company around 1900. Dey moved to Syracuse himself in 1903 to work on his inventions full time.

The merger that swallowed both inventors' companies

In 1900, the time-recording businesses of Bundy Manufacturing, the Standard Time Stamp Company, and the Willard & Frick Manufacturing Company combined into a new holding entity, the International Time Recording Company (ITR), based in Jersey City. ITR re-incorporated in New York in 1901 and acquired the Chicago Time Register Company that same year. By 1902, Bundy Manufacturing's own operations had formally merged into ITR; in 1906 the combined company moved its headquarters to Endicott, New York.

ITR kept consolidating the industry it had helped create. In 1907 it acquired the Dey Time Register Company outright, moving Dey's dial-recorder manufacturing to Endicott alongside Bundy's key recorders — the two competing mechanisms, invented eleven months apart, now built under one roof. In 1908 ITR acquired the Syracuse Time Recording Co. as well.

The biggest consolidation came in 1911. Financier Charles Ranlett Flint bought up the stock of four separate companies — Bundy Manufacturing, ITR, Herman Hollerith's Tabulating Machine Company, and the Computing Scale Company of America — and combined them into the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR), incorporated June 16, 1911. The four kept operating under their own names as subsidiaries until 1933. In 1924, CTR president Thomas J. Watson Sr., who disliked the hyphenated name, renamed the company International Business Machines. The time-clock business he inherited traced straight back to a jeweler's shop in Auburn, New York, thirty-six years earlier.

Searching federal trademark records for "Bundy," "International Time Recording," and "Dey Time Register" turns up nothing registered to any of these companies for a time clock or time recorder. The only BUNDY word mark on record at all, Serial No. 73420971, was filed April 11, 1983 by an owner named Thomas P. Bundy, for machine pump assemblies and electrical-apparatus repair — a different industry, a different Bundy, registered nearly a century after the time clock that made the name famous. It registered in 1985 and was cancelled for non-renewal in 1991. Searches for "Dey Time Register" surface only an unrelated pharmaceutical company's DEY marks and a 1976 TIME REGISTER mark filed by Business Electronics, Inc. None of the three companies that actually built the time-clock industry ever put their own name on the federal trademark register for it.

The inventor sued by his own name

Bundy Manufacturing's patents had already been tested in court once, years before the mergers. In Bundy Mfg. Co. v. Detroit Time-Register Co., 94 F. 524 (6th Cir., decided May 2, 1899), Bundy sued a rival maker for infringing claims 3 and 4 of Willard's 1891 patent (No. 452,894) and a separate patent the company had acquired from Austrian inventor Wilhelm Bauer (No. 305,882, for a watchman's time detector). The trial court found no infringement, reading Bundy's patent narrowly. The Sixth Circuit reversed, ruling that Detroit Time-Register's machine used mechanical equivalents of Bundy's patented elements even though it pushed a key rather than turning one, and pressed type onto the strip rather than striking it with a hammer. The case went back down with instructions to grant Bundy an injunction and an accounting.

That victory belonged to the original company. Willard Bundy himself never saw the next round. In 1903, after a falling-out with his brother Harlow and with ITR's management, Willard left Endicott for Syracuse and, with his son, formed the W.H. Bundy Recording Company — a new business, competing directly with the very company his own invention had built, and sharing his own name with it.

Dey Time-Register Co. sued W.H. Bundy Recording Co. for patent infringement, arguing that Bundy's two-color ribbon mechanism copied claims from a Dey patent covering a clock-controlled machine that printed regular and irregular time entries in different colors. Judge Ray, hearing the case, found that Bundy's machine marked irregular entries with a separate dash or star instead of a second ink color — a different kind of mark, achieving a similar practical result by different means. He dismissed the bill: "the claims cannot be extended by construction." Willard's new company won.

International Time Recording Co. — which had absorbed Dey's own company in 1907 — came after W.H. Bundy Recording Co. a second time, this time over a separate patent (the "Cooper" patent, covering a clock-driven abutment mechanism that shifted a punched card to a new position every half day). Circuit Judge Lacombe, reviewing the case on appeal, found that two of three accused Bundy machines didn't infringe, but that the "Weekly Time Recorder" model did, under claims covering a clock-controlled, intermittently-operated abutment. ITR won an injunction and an accounting on that one model; the broader claims were held too vague or too broad to sustain. A split decision — ITR partly right, Bundy partly right — between a company built from Willard's own invention and the company Willard started after he was pushed out of it.

W.H. Bundy Recording Co., later doing business as the W.H. Bundy Time Card Printing Co. and under the Monitor name, was sold to the Simplex Time Recorder Company in 1916. Willard Bundy died January 19, 1907, a few years after starting that second company and in the middle of this litigation; Harlow Bundy retired from business in 1915 and died in Pasadena in 1916.

"A lot of business owners didn't necessarily see the need for a time clock like this," said Tom Bezek, who works at the Bundy Museum in Binghamton, in a 2024 interview. He described the clocks' effect on workers directly: "It was very much an instance of your boss implicitly saying that they don't trust you." Of Willard Bundy's own motives, Bezek said: "He wanted to make these very specific objects that brought him joy." Historian Michael O'Malley, describing the company's early advertising in the same program, called one 1911 Bundy ad "so sinister" for how explicitly it moralized about punctuality — "if punctuality is a virtue, lateness is a sin."

How to tell a real one

• Read the dial plate or case badge before anything else. "Bundy Mfg. Co." identifies pre-1900 production from the original Binghamton company — the rarest and earliest. "International Time Recording Co." marks 1900–1933 output, after the merger. A separate "W.H. Bundy Recording Co." or "Monitor" badge identifies Willard's independent 1903–1916 company, a different manufacturer despite the shared surname. A plain IBM badge means 1924 or later.
• Check the mechanism type if the case is open. A key-shaped slot for individually-cut employee keys points to the Bundy "key recorder" lineage. A rotating numbered dial with a pull lever points to the Dey "dial recorder" lineage. The two mechanisms never merged into one design, even after both companies were owned by the same parent.
• Look for a patent number on the mechanism or an attached plate. A number in the 390,000s to 450,000s range is consistent with Willard Bundy's own patents (1888–1891); a number near 411,586 is Dey's.
• Expect oak cabinetry, a visible pendulum, and a card or paper-ribbon feed. Expect the movement not to run without restoration — dealers routinely note these as non-functioning, since decades of neglected mainsprings and dried lubrication are the rule, not the exception.
• Treat "Bundy" alone, with no other maker information, as inconclusive. As the history above shows, at least three legally distinct companies used that name between 1888 and 1916.

The look-alikes

The biggest look-alike trap in this category isn't a knockoff — it's the real history. Three legitimately different companies made machines carrying the Bundy name: the original Bundy Manufacturing Co. (1889–1900/02), ITR's Bundy-badged line after the merger (1900/02–1933), and Willard's own independent W.H. Bundy Recording Co. (1903–1916), the company that ITR and Dey separately sued. A seller calling any of these simply "a Bundy clock" isn't necessarily wrong, but isn't telling you which Bundy it actually is.

Some Bundy Mfg. Co. clocks used clock movements bought from an established clockmaker rather than built in-house — one documented example carries an 8-day dual-spring movement signed "Seth Thomas" inside a Bundy-branded case, a reminder that the recording mechanism and the timekeeping movement were often sourced from different makers even on an authentic piece.

After 1916, Simplex Time Recorder Co. continued manufacturing under its own name, having absorbed Willard's Monitor/W.H. Bundy line; after 1924, ITR's former products carried IBM badging as the Time Equipment Division, which IBM itself sold to Simplex in 1958. A clock badged "Simplex" or plain "IBM" is a legitimate descendant of this same lineage, not a competitor's imitation — but it postdates the Bundy and Dey names entirely and shouldn't be priced or described as either.

What they sell for

No confirmed realized sale price for an authenticated Bundy or W.H. Bundy Recording Co. time clock turned up in this research, despite checking several auction-result platforms; the hammer prices on the two most relevant recent lots are both paywalled behind a login. What's available instead are a professional appraisal and two pre-sale estimates, and they should be read as exactly that — not as sold prices.

Item	Figure	What it actually is
Dey Time Recorder, appraised on Antiques Roadshow	$1,500–$2,000 (1999); revised to $3,000 (2013)	A professional appraisal by clock specialist Gordon S. Converse, not a sale
Bundy Mfg. Co. Time Recorder Clock, Fontaine's Auction Gallery, March 2022	$200–$300	Pre-sale estimate; case notes a missing time recorder mechanism and replacement dial
W.H. Bundy Recording Co. Time Clock, The Auction Barn, January 2024	$400–$600	Pre-sale estimate; listing notes "missing letters" and overall wear

The spread between the Dey appraisal and the two Bundy pre-sale estimates is partly a condition story — both Bundy lots are explicitly noted as incomplete or worn — and partly a reminder that Dey and Bundy machines, while historically intertwined, are not the same product and shouldn't be assumed to carry the same value.

Where the records disagree

Wikipedia's own Bundy Manufacturing Company article, detailed as it is on the merger history, says nothing about either lawsuit against W.H. Bundy Recording Co. — a real gap between the encyclopedic record and the court record this guide pulled directly from the opinions themselves.

A specialist horology reference site, workclocks.co.uk, notes that "evidence suggests" Willard Bundy's first patent may date to December 10, 1878 — nine years before the confirmed 1887 filing covered above — while explicitly flagging that claim as unconfirmed rather than settled. This guide reports only the documented 1887–1891 patent trail, not the 1878 claim.

Sources also differ on exactly when Bundy Manufacturing's operations formally became part of ITR. Wikipedia's own company history describes ITR as having been "formed" in 1900 specifically "to take over" Bundy's time-recording business, while a separate horology reference gives 1902 as the year the merger was actually completed — a two-year spread that popular accounts often flatten into a single date.

Finally, the $1,500–$3,000 Antiques Roadshow appraisal is for a Dey Time Recorder specifically, not a Bundy. Casual listings and collector forums frequently discuss "Bundy" and "Dey" clocks interchangeably, since both ended up inside the same corporate family by 1907 — but they are mechanically distinct machines from companies that were, for most of their history, competitors rather than siblings.

For more on companies whose own names went unregistered for decades, see the guides to Edward Miller & Co. and Red Wing Stoneware's wing mark. For the rest of the library, see the Field Guides index.