Amano Time Clock
2003.2.5 Gift of Bill Dugger

September’s Artifact of the Month is an Amano Time Clock, which is not only a beautiful piece of machinery, but also a part of Redding’s history. Built by Amano Time Systems, a Japanese manufacturer in the 1970s, it was used in Redding’s premier upscale department store at the time, Dicker’s.

Dicker’s Department Store was located in downtown Redding on South Market and opened in 1943. In support of Redding's downtown and the planning for a new covered mall, Robert and Herbert Dicker, the sons of the original owner, built a new store just a block north of where they had been renting up until that time. Dicker’s thrived well into the 1970s in the new location, but the coming of the new Mt. Shasta Mall helped lead to its eventual closure.

This time clock was used to help keep track of employee hours at Dicker’s until possibly three or four years before they closed in 1992. After that, the clock was part of Shasta Office Equipment’s collection of historic office equipment until it was donated to Turtle Bay in 2003.

Time clocks like these were used to record the time a person came into and left work in order to simplify and make more accurate the process of figuring out payroll. With a time clock like this, every employee had a paper time card that they had to insert into the machine. Once it was lined up to the correct day, the employee would push down on the large button on the top. The machine would then print the time and date to the paper card.  Thus, employers could keep track of the time an employee arrived at work, took their lunch, and when they left work to go home.

Today, some companies still use mechanical time clocks. Sometimes these clocks still use paper time cards, but they can also use a “swipeable” card similar to our credit cards, scan your fingerprint, or even use facial recognition software. However, it is much more likely that employees today will be using a program designed for the same purpose on a computer, tablet, or smartphone.

To learn more about this artifact, visit the Artifact of the Month exhibit inside the Museum entrance at Turtle Bay Exploration Park. You can also click the link below for the Artifact of the Month webpage for more information on the exhibit and past blogs.