Ashland, MA
The Warren Telechron Co. was founded in 1912 by Henry Ellis Warren in Ashland, MA. The city of Ashland, the town is also known as the “Clock Town”; the site where Henry Warren’s invention of the electric clock, later manufactured here under the Telechron name. The company started out making consumer mantel and desktop clocks; only later in the 1940’s did they begin creating lite-up advertising clocks for various companies. Among those companies were breweries looking for something else that could be used in bars as well as advertise their products.
At the time the PAM Clock Company located in Brooklyn, NY was already creating advertising clocks for breweries. The Warren Telethon saw this trend and capitalized on it making their own variation of light-up advertising clocks.
Warren Telechron Co. Clocks and PAM Clocks are very similar in how they look and what they were made from. They were crafted in aluminum bodies as well as composite fiber bodies during the metal shortage in WWII; and had unique graphics reverse painted on the glass. Unfortunately over time with age the graphics on the reverse painted faces would get baked and crackle due to the heat of high watt bulbs used to light these signs. Finding clean crisp original faces from these signs are very hard to find these days. Ideally owners should use 15 watt bulbs or less to light these signs; or until recently LED bulbs work the best as they don’t give off any heat when lit.
Warren Telechron Co. produced advertising clocks for various breweries like Barbey’s, Sunshine, Metz, Hull’s, Harvard, Senate, and Croft just to name a few.
