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Electric Neon Clock Co. Aztec Clocks |
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Here's the classic neon clock. We've found them on banks in ghost towns, on auto shops on Route 66, in state parks, and on Madison Avenue in the Big Apple. Sometimes they are pristine, sometimes they're mostly rust, and sometimes they've been abominated (see the page on what NOT to do to a neon clock).
They only differ in style on several points... the structure of the body, whether they have a marquee, the style of hands, glass tubes rather than numbers on the face, and possible the color of the face.
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Some of the early models had a removable back. This made servicing easy, but they probably didn't hang well using the mounting bracket on the back. |
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Some had a marquee, with the mounting rail for the wooden letters. These are great, but the letters didn't weather too well. |
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There are a variety of different styles of hands, from more basic hour and minute hands, to the more traditional ENCC hands with holes on the hour hand base, and second hands with crescent moon shapes rahter than weighted rectangles as the counterbalance. |
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A very rare design uses opaque glass tubes as the hour/minute indicators rather than numbers. |
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We have seen a few instance of a what face with black numbers, rather than a black face with white numbers, but these could have been instances of someon mounting an "Aztec" ring on an "exposed ring" clock body. |
Click on the Photo to see a larger image
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The classic Aztec, in pink and green. Finding one with original working neon is a thrill. Note the older style hands. Aztecs also had the more traditional hands found on the "bubble" clocks. | ||
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This is an interesting design that is quite rare. This uses glass tubes (evidently not neon-lit tubes) for the numbers. There is a patent by this company that uses this design in the drawings, but we think the patent is actually for a marquee design we have not seen on Aztec clocks. | ||
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Here's a great example of the marquis with the wooden letters. This is a beauty. | ||
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The white-faced Aztec clocks are also rare. I originally though that someone just put an Aztec ring on an exposed-ring clock, but the few of these I have seen have a white-painted cowling behind the Aztec ring, as opposed to the brushed steel cowling you see on the exposed ring clocks. So maybe they did make some like this originally. | ||
| Photos of Aztecs in the "wild"... | |||
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| Manatou Springs, CO | Unknown | Tulsa, OK | Livingston, TN |
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Plenty more Aztecs in the Electric Neon Clock Company Gallery |
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Back to the Cleveland Company page | |
