West Dunbartonshire Arts and Heritage
November 5, 2024
The Week In 1973: On the 31st of October 1973 the County Reporter ran an article detailing an important milestone at the Westclox factory.
The firm was celebrating its 25 year anniversary at Strathleven Industrial Estate with the gifting of the 50 millionth clock made at the factory.
The United Clock Company was formed in Illinois in 1885. It was re-organised two years later as the Western Clock Company and then again the next year as the Western Clock Manufacturing Company. The shortened name Westclox first appeared on its signature Big Ben alarm clocks in 1910. In 1931 the firm became a division of General Time Corporation. Westclox originally planned to begin production in Scotland in 1939, however this was stopped by the outbreak of World War 2. The company eventually produced it’s first clock at the factory in the Vale of Leven on the 21st of September 1948.
The Westclox factory made and assembled every single part of the time pieces it built with only the basic raw materials being brought in from external suppliers. By 1949 the factory was making 10,000 clocks per week and the employment benefits to the area were huge. The firm produced its 1 millionth clock in 1950. By the middle of the decade the plant had to be expanded and the product range being produced was also increased.
Success continued for the firm up to the mid 1960s, with it employing over 1000 people and exporting its products to over 100 countries around the world. The company had difficult times in the late 1960s when cheap foreign competition led to a reduction in revenue and staff redundancies however the firm’s parent company, General Time, was bought over by Talley Industries in 1968 and the change in management led to another period of success for the company culminating in the production of the factory’s 50 millionth clock in 1973. The clock in question was gifted to then Minister for Industrial Development Christopher Chataway, M.P. while every employee was gifted a General Time wristwatch as part of the celebrations.
The company was in the newspapers again in 1974 when none other than first man on the moon Neil Armstrong paid a visit to the factory.
This was part of a promotional drive for “Quartz” timekeeping, the new and more accurate technology that was developed by General Time for use in the Apollo 11 moon mission.
The astronomer Patrick Moore accompanied Armstrong on the visit and following the tour the two were taken to a buffet lunch at the Dumbuck Hotel. Armstrong then travelled to the Exchange Suite in West George Street in Glasgow where he gave a talk to school children on space travel and the importance of accurate time-keeping.
Sadly, it was the advent of this new quartz technology which initiated the demise of mechanical clock production in the Vale. Ownership of the factory was transferred to the outsourcing company Turnkey in the late 1980s, bringing clockmaking at Strathleven Industrial Estate to an end.
You can see what production looked like in the Westclox factory in the early 1960s in this excellent video on the National Library of Scotland’s Moving Image Archive website here: https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/8464.
The astronomer Patrick Moore accompanied Neil Armstrong on the visit to Westclox and following the tour of the factory the two were treated to a buffet lunch at the Dumbuck Hotel.
Celebrating the Westclox awards, 1986 and some of the happy workforce at Strathleven (below).
