Dey Time Registers
Dr. Alexander Dey was educated at Aberdeen and Cambridge universities, and was one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools in Scotland for 30 years from 1873. He invented and patented the dial recorder in 1888 while living in Glasgow, Scotland. While he continued to reside there, he and his brother John Dey formed the Syracuse-based Dey Patents Company in 1893, which became the Dey Time Register Company around 1900. Dr. Alexander Dey moved to Syracuse, New York in 1903 to give his full attention to the manufacture of his inventions. The US-based company was acquired by the International Time Recording Company in 1907.
The Howard brothers established an equivalent company in the UK in 1896 to market Dey time recorders, and later registered ‘Dey Time Registers Ltd’ (UK company registration number 98801) in 1907. This company then became ITR’s ‘UK branch’ in 1912, known as International Time Recording Company Ltd. It appears that Howard Bros. originally manufactured their own version as the ‘Dey Time Register’ in England, with all later imported models showing ‘Made in the USA’ on their dials.
The UK range included smaller 50, 100, and 150 employee clocks, plus huge 200 employee versions. Please visit the Photos page (link below) for examples of the time recorders supplied by each of the 3 different companies.