Montgomery County Georgia Web Portal

It may look small from the street but the Montgomery County Courthouse Dome is a large building in itself. Inside the dome on all four sides are the faces of a hugh clock. Each of the four faces of the clock measure 6 feet across, with an 18 inch wide 1 foot deep surround beyond that. Effectively the clock (including the surround), is 9 feet wide.

The courthouse clock was built by the E. Howard Company of Mass. The clock was originally entirely mechanical. Like a huge grandfather clock, this time machine was powered by a pendulum and weights. The weights were 65 pounds of iron suspended by a cable. The timing for this arrangement was controlled by a pendulum and escapement wheel. This controlled the speed of the cable drop, making it take a week for the weights to fall three floors distance. Then in order to keep the clock ticking the pendulum would have to be cranked back up to the top by maintenance workers, using a hand crank. This was a very difficult job, and was supposed to be preformed once each week, but since it was so labor intensitive it sometimes was not done on time or at all. This led to the clock not showing the correct time, or sometimes being stopped all together.

Over the years, the clock began to show the ravages of time, didn’t keep correct time, and began to not work at all. Several repairs were made to the old mechanical system, but it was badly worn and needed to be replaced.

By the 1950s the clock had been converted to a half electrical, and half mechanical operation using two electric motors and some of the mechanical gearing for the “Time Side”.

This system of two electric motors worked fine if the power didn’t go off. But when the power went off, even for a few minutes, the clock would have to be reset, since the mechanical pendulum was no longer in service and the clock would stop.

Over the years from the 1950s into the 1970s few repairs were made to the way the clock worked. Some patch repairs weren’t holding up and some of the parts were worn out and others missing. By the 1980s the clock had stopped working all together, and seemed to be lost forever. The entire courthouse itself was in very bad shape because of its age and needed repairs.

A courthouse renovation project was on the commissioners agenda in the late 1980s. The old clock was included in the courthouse renovation project which was well underway in the early 1990s. The clock finally would chime once again.

Bernie Tekippe and Bob Tuchow of the Classic Clock Company of Atlanta Georgia removed most of the gears from the clock’s mainframe in October of 1990. They cleaned the clockworks, repainted the frame, discarded two old electric motors, and rebuilt the main clock’s “Time Side” with new gears etc., for more accurate time keeping. They reassembled the clock, and did some substantial alterations to the clock housing area inside of the dome of the courthouse. Presently, the main clock housing is inside a cabinet in the courthouse dome.

In this rebuild of the clock mechanism, they brought back the pendulum, used one electric motor, and a small twelve pound weight, and small pendulum. When power would go off, the twelve pound weight would fall and keep the clock running. For momentary power interruptions, after the weight falls a few inches, a peg in its cord strikes a switch which turns on a small motor that pulls the weight back up to its starting position. Should power stay off for an extended period of time, the weight can fall as far as the floor below and keep the clock accurate for up to twelve hours.

Today the clock is run by one electric motor which sits on the top of the clock frame. This means that we still have a pendulum clock of sorts, that’s also electric. The present day courthouse keeps very good time.