The history of the time recorder and employee attendance systems

The very first employee time recorder was designed and manufactured in 1888 in New York by Willard Bundy who was a jeweler by trade. As his employee time clock became more popular he set up the Bundy Manufacturing Company with his brother Harlow to make time clocks on a larger scale.

A short while later the Bundy Manufacturing Company teamed up with two other time equipment companies to form International Time Recorders (ITR) who became the selling agent for Bundy Manufacturing. Another major time clock manufacturer at the time was the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation which later became IBM.

ITR had worldwide offices, and operated one of it's branches from Bristol in the South West of England. Part of the UK management team was based at Bristol where Brian Churchill was director of UK service operations. When ITR was sold to Blick International in 1983, Brian started his own Company Avon Time Recording Services, which 21 years later became facetime Ltd in 2004

This ITR time clock (shown to the right) from 1918 would stamp a date and time onto a pre-cut card (time card). This would allow the timekeeper to keep track of the hours worked for each employee so that they could be paid the correct amount.

The time cards had a time in and time out box printed onto them, the employee was required to line up the markings on the card insert mechanism (card throat), insert the time card, and then press down on a lever that activated a hammer mechanism which enabled the date and time to be imprinted onto the clock card through an inked ribbon.

A problem with this system meant that overstamping was a possibility and was commonly used by employees to their advantage.

 

 

PC Linked Time and Attendance-A Matter of Time

With the advent of the personal computer revolution of the 1980's it was only a matter of time before this new micro processor technology found it's way into the time and attendance industry. In the early 1980's electronic time recorders like the Infotime, which calculated the employee clocking's and printed the hours worked via an internal printer onto a paper roll automatically.

The time recorder was now becoming even more useful by providing the information faster and more accurately. By the early 1990's pc linked time attendance software would enable up to the minute information on employee attendance records at the touch of a button.