A time clock, sometimes known as a clock card machine or punch clock or time recorder, is a device that records start and end times for hourly employees (or those on

flexi-time Flextime (also spelled flexitime ( BE) or flex-time) is a flexible hours schedule that allows workers to alter their workday and decide/adjust their start and finish times. In contrast to traditional work arrangements that require employees to wor ...

) at a place of business. In mechanical time clocks, this was accomplished by inserting a heavy paper card, called a time card, into a slot on the time clock. When the time card hit a contact at the rear of the slot, the machine would print day and time information (a

timestamp A timestamp is a sequence of characters or encoded information identifying when a certain event occurred, usually giving date and time of day, sometimes accurate to a small fraction of a second. Timestamps do not have to be based on some absolut ...

) on the card. One or more time cards could serve as a timesheet or provide the data to fill one. This allowed a timekeeper to have an official record of the hours an employee worked to calculate the pay owed an employee. The terms Bundy clock, bundy clock, or just bundy''Bundy.'' (n.d.). ''Collins English Dictionary'' – Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition. Retrieved April 10, 2014, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bundy have been used in

Australian English Australian English (AusE, AusEng, AuE, AuEng, en-AU) is the set of varieties of the English language native to Australia. It is the country's common language and ''de facto'' national language; while Australia has no official language, Eng ...

for time clocks. The term comes from brothers Willard and Harlow Bundy.

History

Origins

An early and influential time clock, sometimes described as the first, was invented on November 20, 1888, by Willard Le Grand Bundy, a jeweler in

Auburn, New York Auburn is a city in Cayuga County, New York, United States. Located at the north end of Owasco Lake, one of the Finger Lakes in Central New York, the city had a population of 26,866 at the 2020 census. It is the largest city of Cayuga County, ...

. His patent of 1890 speaks of mechanical time recorders for workers in terms that suggest that earlier recorders already existed, but Bundy's had various improvements; for example, each worker had his own key. A year later his brother, Harlow Bundy, organized the

Bundy Manufacturing Company The Bundy Manufacturing Company was a 19th-century American manufacturer of timekeeping devices that went through a series of mergers, eventually becoming part of International Business Machines and Simplex Time Recorder Company. It was the fi ...

, and began mass-producing time clocks. In 1900, the time recording business of Bundy Manufacturing, along with two other time equipment businesses, was consolidated into the

International Time Recording Company The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) was a holding company of manufacturers of record-keeping and measuring systems subsequently known as IBM. In 1911, financier and noted trust organizer, "Father of Trusts", Charles R. Flint ama ...

(ITR). In 1911, ITR, Bundy Mfg., and two other companies were

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(via stock acquisition), forming a fifth company,

Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) was a holding company of manufacturers of record-keeping and measuring systems subsequently known as IBM. In 1911, financier and noted trust organizer, "Father of Trusts", Charles R. Flint ama ...

(CTR), which would later change its name to IBM. The Bundy clock (see image left) was used by

Birmingham City Transport Birmingham City Transport was the local authority-owned undertaking that provided road-based public transport in Birmingham, England, between 1899 and 1969. It was locally known as the Corporation Buses. Initially, it was called Birmingham Cor ...

to ensure that bus drivers did not depart from outlying termini before the due time; now preserved at

Walsall Arboretum Walsall Arboretum is a Victorian public park located close to Walsall town centre in the West Midlands of England. Part of the park and surrounding housing are covered by the Arboretum conservation area. In the early 2010s, the park has undergo ...

. In 1909, Halbert P. Gillette explained about the state of the art around time clocks in those days: An example of this other form of time clock, made by IBM, is pictured. The face shows employee numbers which would be dialed up by employees entering and leaving the factory. The day and time of entry and exit was punched onto cards inside the box.

Mid 20th century

In 1958, IBM's Time Equipment Division was sold to the

Simplex Time Recorder Company SimplexGrinnell, a subsidiary of Johnson Controls, is an American company specializing in active fire protection systems, communication systems and testing, inspection and maintenance services. The company headquarters is in Boca Raton, Florida; ...

. However, in the United Kingdom ITR (a subsidiary of IBM United Kingdom Ltd.) was the subject of a

management buy-out A management buyout (MBO) is a form of acquisition in which a company's existing managers acquire a large part, or all, of the company, whether from a parent company or individual. Management-, and/or leveraged buyout became noted phenomena of 1 ...

in 1963 and reverted to International Time Recorders. In 1982, International Time Recorders was acquired by Blick Industries of Swindon, England, who were themselves later absorbed by Stanley Security Systems. The first punched-card system to be linked to a

Z80 The Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor introduced by Zilog as the startup company's first product. The Z80 was conceived by Federico Faggin in late 1974 and developed by him and his 11 employees starting in early 1975. The first working samples were ...

microprocessor was developed by

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in the late 1970s and introduced as a product in 1979.

Late 20th century

In the late 20th century, time clocks started to move away from the mechanical machines to computer-based, electronic

time and attendance Time and attendance systems (TNA) are used to track and monitor when employees start and stop work. A time and attendance system enables an employer to monitor their employees working hours and late arrivals, early departures, time taken on breaks ...

systems. The employee registers with the system by swiping a

magnetic stripe card The term digital card can refer to a physical item, such as a memory card on a camera, or, increasingly since 2017, to the digital content hosted as a virtual card or cloud card, as a digital virtual representation of a physical card. They share ...

, scanning a

barcode A barcode or bar code is a method of representing data in a visual, machine-readable form. Initially, barcodes represented data by varying the widths, spacings and sizes of parallel lines. These barcodes, now commonly referred to as linear or o ...

, bringing an RFID (radio-frequency identification) tag close to a reader, entering a number or using a biometric reader. These systems are much more advanced than the mechanical time clock: various reports can be generated, including on compliance with the

European Working Time Directive Working Time Directive''2003/88/ECis a European Union law Directive and a key part of European labour law. It gives EU workers the right to: *at least 28 days (four weeks) in paid holidays each year, *rest breaks of 20 minutes in a 6 hour per ...

, and a Bradford factor report. Employees can also use the system to request holidays, enter absence requests and view their worked hours. User interfaces can be personalized and offer robust self-service capabilities. Electronic time clock machines are manufactured in many designs by companies in China and sold under various brand names in places around the world, with accompanying software to extract the data from a single time clock machine, or several machines, and process the data into reports. In most cases local suppliers offer technical support and in some cases installation services. More recently, time clocks have started to adopt technology commonly seen in phones and tablets – called 'Smartclocks'. The "state of the art" smartclocks come with multi-touch screens, full color displays, real time monitoring for problems, wireless networking and over the air updates. Some of the smartclocks use front-facing cameras to capture employee clock-ins to deter "buddy clocking" or "buddy punching", whereby one employee fraudulently records the time of another. This problem usually requires expensive biometric devices. With the increasing popularity of cloud-based software, some of the newer time clocks are built to work seamlessly with the cloud.

Types

Basic time clock

A basic time clock will just stamp the date and time on a time card, similar to a parking validation machine. These will usually be activated by a button that a worker must press to stamp their card, or stamp upon full insertion. Some machines use punch hole cards instead of stamping, which can facilitate automated processing on machinery not capable of

optical character recognition Optical character recognition or optical character reader (OCR) is the electronic or mechanical conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo of a document, a sc ...

. There are also variations based on manufacture and machine used, and whether the user wants to record weekly or monthly recordings. The time cards usually have the workdays, "time in", and "time out" areas marked on them so that employees can "punch in" or "punch out" in the correct place. The employee may be responsible for lining up the correct area of the card to be punched or stamped. Some time clocks feature a bell or signal relay to alert employees as to a certain time or break. Fraudulent operation of time clocks can include overstamping, where one time is stamped over another, and buddy-punching, where one employee records time for another. In extreme cases, employees can use buddy-punching to skip entire days of work or accumulate additional overtime.

Self-calculating machines

Self-calculating machines are similar to basic time clocks. Nevertheless, at the end of each period the total time recorded is added up allowing for quicker processing by

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payroll A payroll is the list of employees of some company that is entitled to receive payments as well as other work benefits and the amounts that each should receive. Along with the amounts that each employee should receive for time worked or tasks pe ...

. These machines sometimes have other functions such as automatic stamping, dual-colour printing, and automated column shift. Software based time and attendance systems are similar to paper-based systems, but they rely on computers and check-in terminals. They are backed up with software that can be integrated with the human resources department and in some cases payroll software. These types of systems are becoming more popular but due to high initial costs they are usually only adopted by large business of over 30 employees. Despite this they can save a business a lot of money every year by cutting down errors and reducing administration time.

Mobile time tracking

With the mass market proliferation of mobile devices (smart phones, handheld devices), new types of self-calculating time tracking systems have been invented which allow a mobile workforce – such as painting companies or construction companies - to track employees 'on' and 'off' hours. This is generally accomplished through either a mobile application, or an IVR based phone call in system. Using a mobile device allows enterprises to better validate that their employees or suppliers are physically 'clocking in' at a specific location using the GPS functionality of a mobile phone for extra validation.

Biometrics

Biometric time clocks are a feature of more advanced

systems. Rather than using a key, code or chip to identify the user, they rely on a unique attribute of the user, such as a hand print, finger print, finger vein, palm vein, facial recognition, iris or retina. The user will have their attribute scanned into the system. Biometric readers are often used in conjunction with an access control system, granting the user access to a building, and at the same time clocking them in recording the time and date. These systems also attempt to cut down on fraud such as "buddy clocking." When combined with an access control system they can help prevent other types of fraud such as 'ghost employees', where additional identities are added to payroll but don't exist.

References

External links

IBM Time Clocks
(PDF files)
National Museum of American History: International Dial Time Recorder Clockwww.timerecorder.de/
(mostly in German, but partly translated into English) is one of the most comprehensive online documentations of the history of time recorders and time clocks
Harlow Bundy's home in Binghamton, it was restored and now houses a museum dedicated to the Bundys.
*https://www.huntonprivacyblog.com/2017/06/01/washington-becomes-third-state-enact-biometric-privacy-law/ *https://codes.findlaw.com/tx/business-and-commerce-code/bus-com-sect-503-001.html {{Authority control Products introduced in 1888 Clocks Working time