Dr. Alexander Dey received U.S. Patent No. 411586 on a Workman’s Time-Recorder — a time clock on September 24, 1889.

In Dr. Dey’s own words, the invention “consists in a novel construction and combination, with a clock, of mechanisms by means of which employés of shops, factories, and other establishments may be enabled to record the time of their entering and leaving their place of business, and thus save the extra expense of watchmen or time keeper’s usually employed for the aforesaid purpose.”

Dr Alexander Dey was educated at Aberdeen and Cambridge Universities. He worked as an inspectors of schools in Scotland from 1873 to 1903. As a side hustle he invented the time recorder, He and his brother John Dey formed the Dey Patents Company in Syracuse New York in 1893, which eventually became the Dey Time Register Company around 1900. Dr Alexander Dey moved to Syracuse in 1903 to work full time on his inventions. The brothers’ company was acquired by the International Time Recording Company four years later in 1907. In 1911, International Time Recording Company merged with two other firms and became the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, later renamed International Business Machines, or IBM.

On behalf of everyone who has ever had to punch a time clock, thank you?