Civil Rights
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
Explore the people, places, events, achievements, struggles and stories that shaped our journey.
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
Innovation, patents, science, technology and world-changing contributions.
Pioneers, champions, Negro Leagues, records, activism and excellence.
Meet the people whose lives, choices and achievements shaped the journey.
Black towns, communities, institutions and places where history happened.
Moments that changed communities, movements, institutions and the nation.
In August 1908, a white mob attacked Springfield, Illinois’s Black community, destroying homes and businesses and lynching two Black men. National outrage over the violence helped spur the movement that created the NAACP the following year.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985

The Museum of Clockmaking (German: Uhrenindustriemuseum) is a museum in the town of Villingen-Schwenningen, Germany, and is dedicated to the history of the clockmaking industry in the town. For much of the 19th century (and early 20th century), Schwenningen was one of southern Germany's most important centres of industrial scale clock manufacturing.
The museum is at Bürkstraße 39, a building that was built to house the manufacturing plant for clocks by Wũrttenbergische Uhrenfabrik Bũrk Söhne. That company was considered to be the world leader in the specialised field of portable watchmen's control clocks and related time-recording devices.
The core of the museum's collection is made up of working production machinery used to make precision metal parts that can be assembled into clock movements. They have all the machinery in-house to produce all components (except for the mainspring) to manufacture a simple alarm clock movement. Staffing permitting, the full museum visit includes a demonstration of the lathes, milling machines and punch presses, as well as the assembly and packaging process.
In addition, there is a comprehensive display of locally mass-produced clocks from most of the former clock factories of Schwenningen. The museum also puts on temporary exhibitions.
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
The Museum of Clockmaking (German: Uhrenindustriemuseum) is a museum in the town of Villingen-Schwenningen, Germany, and is dedicated to the history of the clockmaking industry in the town. For much of the 19th century (and early 20th century), Schwenningen was one of southern Germany's most important centres of industrial scale clock manufacturing. The museum is at Bürkstraße 39, a building that was built to house the manufacturing plant for clocks by Wũrttenbergische Uhrenfabrik Bũrk Söhne. That company was considered to be the world leader in the specialised field of portable watchmen's control clocks and related time-recording devices. The core of the museum's collection is made up of working production machinery used to make precision metal parts that can be assembled into clock movements. They have all the machinery in-house to produce all components (except for the mainspring) to manufacture a simple alarm clock movement. Staffing permitting, the full museum visit includes a demonstration of the lathes, milling machines and punch presses, as well as the assembly and packaging process. In addition, there is a comprehensive display of locally mass-produced clocks from most of the former clock factories of Schwenningen. The museum also puts on temporary exhibitions.
The history of clockmaking in Besançon began significantly at the end of the 18th century, when Swiss clockmakers set up their first workshops in the Comtois capital. Then, little by little, the people of Besançon joined in the clockmaking fever, definitively transforming Besançon into the Capitale française de l'horlogerie (French capital of clockmaking) at the 1860 International Exhibition, held in Place Labourey. The city produced up to 90% of French watches by 1880, and despite a crisis in the 1890s and 1900s, the clockmaking sector recovered and continued to grow. The city continued to play a leading role in the clockmaking industry until the crisis of the 1930s, and recovered before the end of World War II, but the industry lost a significant share of its activity after the end of this conflict. The 1970s brought an end to this mythical epic, as the major companies went into decline in the wake of the oil crisis. The clockmaking industry continued to play an important role in Besançon's economy and employment for generations. And although today the number of watchmaking workshops has declined, the industry remains represented in the region, which had 89 establishments employing 2,119 salaried workers. Several institutions and buildings associated with the industry remain in the city, including the former Dodane watchmaking factory, the Musée du Temps, the monumental clock at the Viotte train station, and the École d'Horlogerie de Besançon. Companies associated with Besançon's watchmaking history have included Lip, Yema, Zenith and Maty. The Lip affair of the 1970s was significant in the history of the city's industrial and labor relations during the period. Among the individuals associated with the development of watchmaking in Besançon was Laurent Mégevand, who is credited with establishing the industry in the city.
The German Clock Museum (German: Deutsches Uhrenmuseum) is situated near the centre of the Black Forest town of Furtwangen im Schwarzwald (Germany), a historical centre of clockmaking. It features permanent and temporary exhibits on the history of timekeeping. The museum is part of the local technical college (Hochschule Furtwangen).
A clock or chronometer is a device that measures and displays time. The clock is one of the oldest human inventions, meeting the need to measure intervals of time shorter than the natural units such as the day, the lunar month, and the year. Devices operating on several physical processes have been used over the millennia. Some predecessors to the modern clock may be considered "clocks" that are based on movement in nature: A sundial shows the time by displaying the position of a shadow on a flat surface. There is a range of duration timers, a well-known example being the hourglass. Water clocks, along with sundials, are possibly the oldest time-measuring instruments. A major advance occurred with the invention of the verge escapement, which made possible the first mechanical clocks around 1300 in Europe, which kept time with oscillating timekeepers like balance wheels. Traditionally, in horology (the study of timekeeping), the term clock was used for a striking clock, while a clock that did not strike the hours audibly was called a timepiece. This distinction is not generally made any longer. Watches and other timepieces that can be carried on one's person are usually not referred to as clocks. Spring-driven clocks appeared during the 15th century. During the 15th and 16th centuries, clockmaking flourished. The next development in accuracy occurred after 1656 with the invention of the pendulum clock by Christiaan Huygens. A major stimulus to improving the accuracy and reliability of clocks was the importance of precise time-keeping for navigation. The mechanism of a timepiece with a series of gears driven by a spring or weights is referred to as clockwork; the term is used by extension for a similar mechanism not used in a timepiece. The electric clock was patented in 1840, and electronic clocks were introduced in the 20th century, becoming widespread with the development of small battery-powered semiconductor devices. The timekeeping element in every modern clock is a harmonic oscillator, a physical object (resonator) that vibrates or oscillates at a particular frequency. This object can be a pendulum, a balance wheel, a tuning fork, a quartz crystal, or the vibration of electrons in atoms as they emit microwaves, the last of which is so precise that it serves as the formal definition of the second. Clocks have different ways of displaying the time. Analog clocks indicate time with a traditional clock face and moving hands. Digital clocks display a numeric representation of time. Two numbering systems are in use: 12-hour time notation and 24-hour notation. Most digital clocks use electronic mechanisms and LCD, LED, or VFD displays. For the blind and for use over telephones, speaking clocks state the time audibly in words. There are also clocks for the blind that have displays that can be read by touch.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.