{"id":4739,"date":"2018-11-24T08:46:17","date_gmt":"2018-11-24T08:46:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/the-clock-that-cost-its-inventor-millions\/"},"modified":"2018-11-24T08:46:17","modified_gmt":"2018-11-24T08:46:17","slug":"the-clock-that-cost-its-inventor-millions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/the-clock-that-cost-its-inventor-millions\/","title":{"rendered":"The clock that cost its inventor millions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n
<\/p>\n

\"Thomas<\/span>

Image caption<\/span>
\n
\n Thomas Bromley’s Digitron Electric Clock was built in his shed at his Hull home in 1961
\n <\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of the world’s first digital clocks, which was made by a man in his shed, has been sold at auction.<\/p>\n

Thomas Bromley, an engineer and amateur inventor, created his Digitron Electric Clock in 1961 at his home in Hull.<\/p>\n

He held the patent to the design for three years but chose not to renew it – potentially costing him millions of pounds.<\/p>\n

The prototype was sold for \u00a3460 to a UK buyer when it went under the hammer in Beverley, East Yorkshire.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Image copyright<\/span>
\n Bromley family<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>

Image caption<\/span>
\n
\n Bromley, who died in 1990, was an electrical engineer by day and an inventor by night
\n <\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Auctioneer John Hawley said Bromley had received an award at the Salon des Inventors in Brussels in 1964 for his prototype and would have been a multimillionaire had he renewed his patent. <\/p>\n

A year after the patent ran out, the Japanese started manufacturing “virtually an identical clock and sold it in many thousands”, he said.<\/p>\n

‘Mad professor’<\/h2>\n

Bromley’s son, David, said the inventor received a commercial order to “make 20 by Christmas but he didn’t have the facility to start manufacturing them”.<\/p>\n

Speaking after the auction, Mr Bromley said he was a bit sad to part with the timepiece.<\/p>\n

“It was always in the cupboard in my mother’s house. She died a couple of months ago and me and my sister felt we just wanted closure.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/span>

Image caption<\/span>
\n
\n Bromley missed out on commercial success and this digital clock, which went under the hammer, is the only one he produced
\n <\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Remembering how his father was “an electrical engineer by day and an inventor by night”, Mr Bromley described how he was “always in his shed”. <\/p>\n

“He’d come out at nine or 10 o’clock at night. He was like a mad professor in there.<\/p>\n

“I used to go in there and sit and watch. He had all sorts of equipment and gadgets. That was his life.”<\/p>\n

Bromley, who died in 1990, also invented curtains that automatically closed when the sun went down.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


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Source<\/a> by [author_name]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image caption Thomas Bromley’s Digitron Electric Clock was built in his shed at his Hull home in 1961 One of the world’s first digital clocks, which was made by a man in his shed, has been sold at auction. Thomas Bromley, an engineer and amateur inventor, created his Digitron Electric Clock in 1961 at his … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":4740,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}