Double-Sided Station Clock from Gents of Leicester, England, 1940s

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An extraordinary double-sided station clock by Gents of Leicester, Bakelite-housed, running on both of its original slave clock movements. The … Read more An extraordinary double-sided station clock by Gents of Leicester, Bakelite-housed, running on both of its original slave clock movements. The factory seals over the movement bolts remain completely intact, this clock has never been opened since the day it left the factory floor.

Gents of Leicester was founded in 1872 by John Thomas Gent, later registered as Gent & Co, and grew into one of Britain's most respected names in electrical timekeeping. In 1903 the company introduced its Pul-syn-etic system, a master clock and slave clock network allowing a single accurate timepiece to drive dozens or hundreds of others across a building or site, all displaying the exact same time from a single source. Railway stations, factories, post offices, and schools across Britain adopted Gents installations by the thousand, and the company's best known surviving clock still hangs today in London's Waterloo Station.

Slave clocks of this kind carried no timekeeping mechanism of their own. Each held Gents' own "S" Type movement, sealed inside a Bakelite housing, advancing the hands by a single mechanical step with every pulse received from the master clock elsewhere in the building, producing the unmistakable clunk that still defines these clocks today. Double-sided versions, like this one, allowed a single fixture to display the correct time to platforms, corridors, or waiting rooms on both sides at once.

What makes this particular clock genuinely remarkable is what has not happened to it. Rather than servicing or resetting an internal movement that has sat untouched for roughly eighty years, the clock has been paired with a pulse generator built directly into the plug, so the original 1940s movements themselves are what drive the hands today. The clock retains its original glass covers and comes with a chain, ready to hang. It measures 30.5 cm in diameter and 13.5 cm in depth. This piece has an attribution mark,
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