Records of the James Arthur Collection of Clocks and Watches

Dr. Arthur Lionel Rawlings is listed as the first curator of the Museum, a position he held from 1956 until his death in 1959. (The Arthur Collection had had specific curators before 1956.) Before his appointment as curator, Rawlings served as the head of special products at the Bulova Research and Development Labs in Woodside, Queens. A native of England, Rawlings attended university in Birmingham and London and held many patents on gyro-compasses, gyroscopic stabilization, and fire-control devices. He wrote several books, including the then-standard works The Theory of the Gyro Compass and Science of Clocks and Watches. Previous employers included Sperry Gyroscope, Ltd., the Scientific Research Branch of the British Admiralty, and the U.S. Time Corporation. He also served as president of the Horological Society of New York and was a member of the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors.

Dr. Rawlings also gave one of the Arthur-funded lectures on May 15, 1953, on the following topic: "From Hours to Microseconds: Three Centuries of Timekeeping Progress, 1650-1950."

An obituary for Dr. Rawlings from the Long Island Star-Journal from November 18, 1959, indicates that he passed away after suffering a heart attack while driving on the Van Wyck Expressway on November 17. He was 78.

Per an October 31, 1956, NYU press release, the Watch and Clock Museum was established in that year from the materials in three collections of timepieces then owned by the University. Over half the materials came from the James Arthur Collection of Clocks and Watches, which had been administered by the University since the 1930s.

The Museum was housed in the Gould Memorial Library at NYU's University Heights campus. With over 3,000 timepieces, the Museum was touted as the largest horological collection in the Western Hempisphere at the time of its establishment.

The Arthur Collection included books and research materials, as well as an endowment for the upkeep of the collection and a periodic lecture series on the topic of "time and its mysteries." The money did not prove sufficient for the upkeep and administration of such a varied and difficult collection (some of the timepieces dated from the 16th century). Without the proper resources to reassemble the timepieces and without a sufficient display method, when the University Heights campus closed in 1973 and NYU relocated to Greenwich Village the artifacts were placed on permanent loan to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. The books from the Arthur Collection were transferred to the University's rare books collection, and the records and photographs of the collection remained with the University Archives.

In 1982 New York University decided to dispose of the Arthur Collection, dividing the items between The Smithsonian Institution, the Time Museum at Rockford, and the NAWCC Museum at Columbia, Pennsylvania but has retained the records of the collection.

In 1985 the Smithsonian transferred the timepieces to the National Watch and Clock Museum in Columbia, Pennsylvania. In 2006, six of the timepiecse from the collection were sold at auction. More information may be found at the museum's website: http://www.nawcc.org/collections.

James Arthur was born February 26, 1842, in Crosscandley, Ireland. As a boy he studied mechanics and developed an interest in horology. In 1871 he emigrated to New York where in 1885 he founded Arthur and Co., manufacturers of mechanical models for inventors and devices such as differential gears for automobiles.

Arthur's spare time was spent collecting and designing and making clocks and watches. In 1925, at the suggestion of his son-in-law, Irving H. Berg, Chaplain of New York University (1919-1936), and later Dean of University College (1936-1941), Arthur presented his collection of 300 clocks, more than 1500 watches and books to New York University. Accompanying the gift was an endowment of $110,000 to support a series of lectures on "time and its mysteries", to keep the collection in a state of repair and to provide for new acquisitions. Arthur stipulated that none of the income was to be used to pay curators.

James Arthur died in Winsted, Connecticut on April 27, 1930.

For more detailed biographical information see The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume XXXI, page 232, published by James T. White & Company, New York, 1944.

April 29, 1932 Time Robert Andrews Millikan, Ph.D., Sc.D., LL.D. California Institute of Technology

May 4, 1933 Time and Change in History John Campbell Merriam, Ph.D., Sc.D., LL.D. Carnegie Institution of Washington

February 6, 1934 On the Lifetime of a Galaxy Harlow Shapley, Ph.D., Sc.D., Litt.D., LL.D. Harvard University

May 16, 1935 The Beginnings of Time Measurement and the Origins of Our Calendar James Henry Breasted, Ph.D., Litt.D., LL.D. The Oriental Institue, The University of Chicago

April 2, 1936 The Time Concept and Time Sense Among Cultured and Uncultured People Daniel Webster Hering, Ph.D., C.E., LL.D. New York University

April 9, 1937 What Is Time? William Francis Gray Swann, A.M., Sc.D. Bartol Research Foundation of Franklin Institute

April 21, 1938 Time and Individuality John Dewey, Ph.D., LL.D. Columbia University

April 26, 1939 Time and the Growth of Physics Arthur H. Compton, Ph.D., Sc.D., LL.D.\ The University of Chicago

April 16, 1941 The Geologic Records of Time Adolph Knoph, Ph.D. Yale University

April 16, 1946 Time and Historical Perspective James T. Shotwell, Ph.D., LL.D. Columbia University

April 7, 1949 Developments in Portable Timepieces George P. Luckey, A.M. Hamilton Watch Company

October 17, 1951 The Early American Clockmaking Industry Brooks Palmer, A.B. National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors

May 15, 1953 From Hours to Microseconds: Three Centuries of Timekeeping Progress, 1650-1950 Arthur Lionel Rawlings, Ph.D. Bulova Research and Development Laboratories

March 14, 1958 Astronomical Time and Atomic Time William Markowitz, Ph.D. Director of the Time Service Division United States Naval Observatory

May 14, 1960 The Astronomical Scale Henry Norris Russell, Ph.D. Princeton University

February 18, 1969 The Hypothesis of Environmental Timing of the Clock Frank A. Brown, Jr. Morrison Professor of Biology Northwestern University

March 4, 1969 The Cellular-Biochemical Clock Hypothesis J. Woodland Hastings Harvard University What was presumably the content of these lectures was publics as follows: "The Biological Clock, Two Views" by Frank A. Brown Jr., J. Woodland Hastings and John D. Palmer, New York, Academic Press [1970]

1972 Physics at the Origin of Time R. Omnes Laboratories de Physique Theoretique et Hautes Energies University de Patis-Sud, Orsay, France

1972 Physics at the Origin of Time Steven Frautschi California Institute of Technology These lectures appear to have been published in "Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences," Vol. 224, pp 339-54 and pp 355-64

April 16, 1975 Time and the Atom: Precise Measurement of Time with Atomic Clocks Norman F. Ramsey Higgins Professor of Physics Harvard University

April 17, 1975 Molecular Beam Spectroscopy with Molecules, Atoms, and Neutrons Norman F. Ramsey Higgins Professor of Physics Harvard University

October 17, 1978 Time Without End: Physics and Biology in an Open Universe General Survey Freeman J. Dyson Professor of Physics The Institute for Advanced Study

October 19, 1978 Time Without End: Physics and Biology in an Open Universe Technical Details Freeman J. Dyson Professor of Physics The Institute of Advanced Study

November 13, 1980 Reality, Illusion and Time John Archibald Wheeler Ashbel Smith Professor of Physics University of Texas at Austin

November 14, 1980 Time and Light John Archibal Wheeler Ashbell Smith Professor of Physics University of Texas at Austin

November 17, 1980 Beyond the End of Time John Archibald Wheeler Ashbell Smith Professor of Physics University of Texas at Austin

Daniel Webster Hering - first curator; served until his death on March 24, 1938

Carlos da Zafra - resigned March 1946

John M. Labberton - April 1946 - June 1950

Edward C. Smith - September 1, 1950 - ?

Arthur Lionel Rawlings - September 1, 1956 - November 17, 1959

Brooks Palmer - Associate Curator - September 1, 1956 - February 1960; Curator February 1960 - ?

The records include information on the clock and watch collection and on the lecture series, "Time and Its Mysteries". The arrangement of the materials found in Archives H and in the office of the Dean of Libraries was chronological; papers from these two sources have been interfiled.