HBO’s The Gilded Age is the rare soap opera that doubles as a history lesson. Already this season, we’ve learned about Booker T. Washington (Michael Braugher) and the early days of his Tuskegee Institute, how Emily Roebling (Liz Wisan) helped finish the Brooklyn Bridge, and the origin of the Metropolitan Opera House. So when showrunner Julian Fellowes introduced a storyline wherein Agnes van Rhijn’s (Christine Baranski) plucky young footman Jack Trotter (Ben Ahlers) invents a new kind of alarm clock, you might have found yourself wondering…did Jack invent the alarm clock? Come to think of it, who did invent the alarm clock? And does that person appear on The Gilded Age?
The answers to those questions are a little bit more complicated than you might think. That’s because the history of the alarm clock is a bit more complicated than you might expect and because it seems that Julian Fellowes is indeed using a real life Gilded Age figure as his inspiration for Jack’s storyline this season.
In case you’ve been distracted by one of the many other storylines on The Gilded Age Season 2, there’s been an ongoing subplot wherein Agnes van Rhijn’s footman John “Jack” Trotter has been tinkering with an alarm clock. While the odious Mrs. Armstrong (Debra Monk) naturally loves to put his side hustle down, the rest of the household staff believe in Jack’s project. So much so, that when it turns out that he’s able to invent a more accurate alarm clock mechanism, the whole house — including Agnes — contribute to the money he’ll need for his patent.
So does this mean that our beloved Jack is secretly a major historical inventor? Well…let’s break this down. Who actually invented the alarm clock?
So did Jack Trotter invent the alarm clock? To quote Agnes van Rhijn herself: “Hardly.” However, in the world of The Gilded Age, Jack has invented a new, more accurate version of the alarm clock — taking the place of a real life American inventor, Seth E. Thomas.
The question of who invented the alarm clock is a complicated one. That’s because you can go as far back as Ancient Greek times to find contraptions like Plato’s water clock that technically fit the bill. According to Altas Obscura’s neat and nifty “2,000-Year History of the Alarm Clocks,” Chinese inventor Yi Xing was one of the first people to invent a gadget similar to what we’d call an alarm clock all the way back in 725. “His Water-Driven Spherical Bird’s-Eye-View Map of the Heaven” not only served as a calendar, marking the movement of celestial bodies, but had little gongs and such timed to go off at specific intervals.
In 1787, American Levi Hutchens created a mechanical alarm clock with the specific purpose of waking him up every day at 4 AM. He never patented this creation, however. Also, you couldn’t change the time of the alarm. It was just set, everyday, for 4 AM. By 1847, French inventor Antoine Redier had patented an adjustable alarm clock…only it wasn’t exactly precise. As The Gilded Age dramatizes, this challenge — of getting an adjustable alarm clock to work down to a specific minute — is what inspires Jack to tinker with his alarm clock.
In 1876, American clockmaker Seth Thomas would patent a small, mechanical wind-up alarm clock, which set off a boom in production. (However, Decider can’t find a citation online that proves Seth E. Thomas himself patented it. It seems the American clockmaker may have died before then, leaving his eponymous clock company to his son.)
Our best guess is that American history nerd Julian Fellowes used the 1870s rise of small mechanical alarm clocks in the U.S. as inspiration for Jack’s storyline. Jack Trotter is a fictional character, but he is representative of many lower and middle class folks of the period who were looking for ways to improve their lot in life through innovation. After all, Julian Fellowes is nothing if not a history nerd.
“[Julian Fellowes] is also a man who knows probably more about American history than most of us,” Gilded Age star Christine Baranski said during a recent event at the present-day Metropolitan Opera House. “He’s fascinated by American history. Certainly the post Civil War, he’s done a tremendous amount of research and he’s a huge, passionate admirer of Edith Wharton and spoke at her home. So, yeah, Julian loves our country.”
So it tracks he’d want to give this innovation to the Yanks…