History of the Cuckoo Clock

A cuckoo clock is usually a pendulum clock that strikes the hours with a sound like a common cuckoo's call and has an mechanical cuckoo bird that moves with each note. Some move their wings, open/close the beak while leaning forward and going out through a little door; in others only the bird's body is leaned forward. The mechanism to produce the cuckoo call has been used since the middle of the 18th century and has remained almost without change until now.

It is not clear who created the first cuckoo clocks in the Black Forest, but this peculiar clock with a bird call very quickly conquered the region. Already by the mid 18th century, several small clockmaking shops produced this kind of clocks with wooden gears. So the first Black Forest models were created between 1740 and 1750.

It is not really clear who invented the cuckoo clock and where the first one was made. It is thought that much of its development and evolution was made in the Black Forest region in southwestern Germany (Baden-Württemberg). The cuckoo clocks were sold to the rest of the world from the mid 1850s on. Today, the cuckoo clock is one of the most popular souvenirs of Germany, Switzerland and Austria., and it has become a cultural icon.

Which was the first cuckoo clock ever known?

In 1629, many decades before clockmaking was established in the Black Forest, an Augsburg nobleman by the name of Philipp Hainhofer (1578–1647) made the first known description of a modern cuckoo clock. The clock belonged to Prince Elector August von Sachsen.