What are Cuckoo Clocks?
Cuckoo clocks, resembling chalet houses, use weights and a pendulum to keep time and sound out a cuckoo’s call every hour through bellows. These carved, collectible clocks originated in the Black Forest region of Germany where talents of carpenters and clock makers combined to form the distinctive timepieces. Most cuckoo clocks have folksy mechanical parts, such as a bird popping out from a window or a lumberjack chopping at a tree. During the long, snowy winters in the Black Forest of the 17th century, people could no longer farm, cut timber, or trade. In a striking convergence of different crafts, the knowledge of gear-driven clock making met the intricate carving of carpenters. Clocks, filtering around Europe, were just beginning to replace sundials as accurate methods of determining the time of day. The first cuckoo clocks were created by Franz Ketterer in 1738 when he attempted to impersonate the distinctive two-tone call of the local cuckoo bird using bellows, rather than bells o
