Time Clock

A time clock is a device that records the start and end times an hourly or flexi-time employee works at a place of business, traditionally by stamping a date and time onto a paper card inserted into a slot, so that an employer can calculate the pay owed for hours actually worked. Willard Le Grand Bundy invented an early influential time clock on November 20, 1888, in Auburn, New York, patented it in 1890, and gave each worker an individual key to operate the machine; his brother Harlow Bundy founded the Bundy Manufacturing Company around 1891 to mass-produce the device, and by 1900 Bundy Manufacturing and two competitors had merged into the International Time Recording Company, which later became part of the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company and eventually IBM. The time clock remained a standard fixture of factories and offices through the twentieth century, and the term bundy clock became common Australian English for such machines.