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Mail on Time – in the Golden Age


By Birgitte Wistoft

One of the "post clocks" in the museum bears the name of Urban Jürgensen on the face and on the works. The number 525 is engraved, and a key and a worn leather case belong to it. Althoug it looks modest, it is actually a chronometer of international format.


Mail on Time
The interest of the postal service in exact measurement of time is nothing new. It has always been a decisive criterion of success that the customers can rely on the quickest possible delivery of any item of mail entrusted to the postal service. For centuries, time was a factor even determining how much salary the postmen and mail carriers would get.

Already in 1796, as a trial, the mail-coach drivers on the route Copenhagen-Hamburg were equipped with refined self-winding pocket clocks in locked cases to which only the postmasters on the route had keys. Times of arrival and departure were carefully noted on the accompanying bill. From 1833, all routes in the country had to be provided with post clocks. These were, however, to be wound up by a key, and from 1842 it was required that they should be placed visibly in the mail-coach so that everybody could orientate themselves of the time.

A Genius of the Golden Age
Urban Jürgensen is no Mr. Anybody among clock enthusiasts. Already at his age he was famous far beyond the frontiers. His clocks are said to be the first to go with a precision comparable to clocks of our time.

Urban, born in Copenhagen in 1776, was son of Court Clockmaker Jørgen Jørgensen or Jürgen Jürgensen as he called himself. As a young man Urban was on a Grand Tour for 5 years visiting all the major European centres of clockmaking of the time: Neuchâtel, Geneva, Paris, and London. In 1801, he returned and took part in the running of his father’s workshops.

His epoch-making work in perfecting different measuring instruments gave him both the silver medal of the Scientific Society (1804) and the great gold medal of the Agricultural Society (1805). His book from 1805 about "Rules of the Exact Measurement of Time by Clocks" became a major work which even after his death appeared in several new editions in Danish, German, and French.

Urban Jürgensen started his own business. From 1809 until his death in 1830 he signed all the clocks he made. In recognition of his theoretical work with chronometry he was returned to the Scientific Society in 1815.

Precious Time
The interest of the postal service in Urban Jürgensen’s clocks was therefore quite intelligible. The museum’s clock is probably originating from the postal service’s purchase of clocks around 1830. Two of Urban Jürgensen’s sons continued their father’s business and from around 1940 the company’s name was Urban Jürgensen & Sons. From 1885 it was called Late Urban Jürgensen & Sons.

It is still possible to buy clocks with the name of Urban Jürgensen on the face and works. Since 1981 they have been produced by Swiss clockmaker Peter Baumberger as 100 % handwork. They are wrist watches of gold or platinum and the prices start at about DKK 90,000.


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