Welcome flip clock fans!
I was traveling about Southern Indiana
this week and I stumbled upon this field
with a lot of old stuff in it and I saw
this car and I thought, 'you know, that
looks like about a 1950 car.'
So I asked some people on reddit and
they came back and told me
that's probably a 1950-1952 Crosley
station wagon.
I've never heard of Crosley. Well what's
this got to do with flip clocks?
Well, let's find out. The Crosley was a
fine car and it was made
in Cincinnati, Ohio from about 1939 to
1952
And we'll find out later how a 50s car
has anything at all to do with this
clock.
What this is, as you may know if you've
seen any of the other videos, it's a
Köhler flip clock. It's a clock
from Germany. I believe it is a
clock that really got the modern
flip clock craze going. It's been hidden
in history for a while.
But we're also going to talk today about
how a lot of things from flip clock
history
can be messed up. Well let's talk about
who made this clock. This is Wilhelm
Köhler. He was born in 1863 in Berlin
and he established the Uhrenfabrik
Laufamholz Köhler & Co
in 1906. Now Uhrenfabrik means clock
Factory and Laufamholz is a place.
So we know something about this clock -  it
was produced in Laufamholz. Well
Laufamholz is a municipality of
Nuremberg - so you can impress your
friends with that.
The original clocks that look like this
one, came from
Nuremberg, Germany.
Well we're going to dive into this clock
a little bit and again we're going to
expose some
logical fallacies or mistakes we've made
in the
over the years.  Well you see that's uh that
looks like brass but it's actually
metal painted brass colored and you can
see that where the winder is here it's
kind of a
rim winder and people's fingers have
rubbed that off. Now you notice it says
"Köhler"
and it says "Germany." So a lot of people
online have been trying to tell me that
well
that had to be from before 1949 and
they've said as much in their
listings on ebay. Well we know something
from World War II
That after the defeat of Nazi Germany,
by the Berlin Declaration of
5 June 1945, the four governments of the
United States, Soviet Union, United
Kingdom, France
acting on behalf of the Allies of World
War II jointly assumed supreme authority
over Germany.
Germany was divided into four occupation
zones for administrative purposes.
the United States United Kingdom, France and
Soviet Union had their part.
This was ratified at the Potsdam
conference in August of 1945.
West Germany was created in 1949 when
the United States Great Britain and
France consolidated the zones that they
had occupied.
The Soviet Union retained their influence
over East Germany.
Until West and East Germany were
reunited in 1990.
So, we can use some logic here:
if the clock says "Made in Germany" or
"Germany" it had to have been made before
1949
before Germany was split into west and
East Germany or after 1990
when the country was reunified, logically.
While this logic is used extensively on
ebay and many other places online the
fascinating thing is
that it's not true. There was no mandate
that West Germany products had to be
labeled as such.
In fact, West Germans considered
themselves to be the true Germany.
On many clocks from 1949 to 1990 you
will find
"Made in germany," "Germany," or "West Germany"
or even a combination of these. On
clocks that are known to have been made
in West Germany.
while you can be certain that an item
labeled "West Germany was made between
1949
and 1990 you cannot use the logic in
reverse.
Now that's something that you'll see
online with not just clocks but a lot of
items and it's a very common
logical error.
Now you see down here there's a screw
it's a real long headed screw
and there's going to be one at the top
right there so those two screws have to
come out.
to get this mechanism out because we
want to get a closer look at this clock.
It's also going to be very interesting
when we find out the connection with the
automobiles from the 1950s.
So what we're going to do is we'll take
that out there.
Take these two screws out and push this
mechanism out so we can get a closer
look.
Now, when I was looking at this clock I
was thinking about the
that unique logo and I wanted to find
out more about it.
So I was getting online and I found out
that Köhler the same company actually
made a lot of dash clocks. These are
clocks that wind up, clocks that you
would pop in a pod on your
dash or in the steering wheel. Now some
of these are priced extremely high -
two thousand, three thousand dollars, I've seen
them two hundred, three hundred dollars.
I thought ah man, that is interesting, and then all
of a sudden this Köhler clock
pops up for twenty five dollars and
eight dollars shipping.
um what in the world this guy says happy
bidding good luck but it was a buy it
now
And I thought, "well that's weird." He said
the clock does not work,  it w_ it would
wind
but it would not work.
That's kind of crazy but thing was it
was a "Buy It Now." So
I'm not sure why he was wishing
"good luck."
So, I bought it! So here it is in
Flip Clock San Studios.
It says "Köhler."
"one jewel"
And what we're going to do is we're
going to take this apart, and what we're
going to find out is that it's very,
very similar. The mechanism is very
similar and maybe identical
to the Köhler flip clock. There's the
ring there, that's the
the winding ring.
That's how you wind it. Now here's how I
fixed it ...
That's it! That's how I fixed it / that's
how I got the clock running.
Hard to believe isn't it> And I'll show
you in a minute. We'll take this apart
and I'll show you how I fixed this or
why that made the clock start running.
And it hasn't stopped since I got it.
And it says "Köhler" there's that logo. Now
Köhler is funny - that that means
"charcoal burner" in German so if you,
if you try to translate Köhler you'll
get real confused, because that's, that's
a person's last name.
And you can see how we're going to take
this apart there's the bezel there the
chrome bezel.
and you have to turn it sort of like a like
a medicine bottle to get to those
ridges,  there are the cutouts there to
where they'll lift off. Now
it's it was hard the first time I took
this apart and it's really hard to get
back together.
Okay here we got a beveled piece of real
glass.
And we're just going to push this out of
its casing here.
That ring kind of keeps the glass in
place.
And then we see there's our clockworks.
You can see the balance wheel going back
and forth.
I stop it here, it takes a while to stop.
And that's the state the clock was in
when the guy had it and when he shipped
it to me.
Now maybe it needed a little oiling or a
little help but that's all I did to get
it started.
I didn't have to do it but once.
Here we see it
says "Germany" of course we know it was
made in West Germany
and we know it was made near Nuremberg
or in a municipality of Nuremberg called
Laufamholz.
Now Köhler, it's kind of interesting that
it says eight Tage
tage it actually says [sounds out the German 
"acht tage"] which
means "eight days." That's eight day
winding
that's what that means, the mechanism you
wind it'll go for eight days, supposedly.
But
Köhler company is kind of interesting
they, they made dash clocks
for cars in the 50s and some famous car
makers
Now you see you're going to push this
mechanism out this way I'm pushing
through the window but i think if you
adjust the can you can get it out...
But they also made clocks for um
aircraft Luftwaffe aircraft
so they they made armaments for
Nazi Germany.
They also supposedly used forced labor
that's what the history books say
about this company, I did not know that
until recently.
If you look in the can there you can see
it's painted metal, as well.
And it seems they were doing some
welding in there or some soldering in
they didn't bother to fix that,
that mess in there. and it's no account it
doesn't hurt anything.
And we'll get this piece of plastic out
this piece of acrylic.
It's curved. Probably a good thing it's
acrylic.
It's held up well not - too many scratches.
And there's that probably some like
flux or something like that when they
were doing the soldering.
I don't feel any need to take that apart
everything's there's no reason to take
that apart so I'm not gonna chance any
mess-ups.
we're gonna go ahead and take this
housing cover off here.
There's just two small screws to do that.
And you got to watch because there's a
little um handle here and that's how you
adjust these,
these clocks that little handle there on
that balance wheel that was going back
and forth the spring that does that
is called a "hair spring" and this will
either tighten or loosen that hair
spring to either speed up or slow down
the clock.
So there's our mechanism it looks a lot,
a lot like the uh dash clock.
Again I'm so lucky to have gotten that
clock because I would have had no idea.
Off it goes!
I've always like the clock works in these
things.
And there's some brass here but again a
lot of these components are painted
metal.
And that's okay but the clock mechanisms
are obviously brass.
And it's a nice clock it really is it's
well made it flips nice
it's been keeping good time and it's a
fairly quiet flipper. That's how you wind
it.
Same as the dash clock we saw earlier
and those dash clocks would have found
them in 50s automobiles.
Maybe not the Crosley we talked about
but that's your connection if you're
wondering.
Kind of interesting to have a clock in
your dash that you had to pop out and
wind every now and then.
That little handle holding it from
springing back.
So there we have it and you look here
and say oh yeah
there's Germany and we know it was West
Germany I mean it was Laufamholz right?
that's where they made these.
Logically - it's in the name.
But is that right? Well
Uhrenfabrik Laufamholz, as we know
made German armaments - they became a
target in World War II.
They were actually destroyed in a
bombing raid in
August 28th of 1943. Wilhelm Köhler got
to see his life's work destroyed.
So when the American Occupation Forces
said they could rebuild they went from
Nuremberg
and took an hour's trip west
probably get away from the war damage.
and ended up in Bergbernheim.
Bergbernheim, Germany. So that's where the
clock factory was reestablished.
And that's where this flip clock would
have been built.
So that's something kind of surprising
isn't it?
When you think you've got everything
figured out, and something is just
obvious,
it's not so much. Well I hope you've
enjoyed this little look at checking
ourselves when it comes to flip clock
history.
Well thanks for taking the time!
