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The Encyclopedia of Horology

Edinburgh, Scotland · 1746 – 1831

Thomas Reid

Partially verified

Precision clockmaking and horological instruction

Life & work

Thomas Reid was a leading Edinburgh clockmaker, apprenticed to his cousin James Cowan in 1762 and later inheriting Cowan's business on his death in 1782. Reid spent part of the 1770s in London gaining further training before returning to Edinburgh, where his firm (from 1806 in partnership with William Auld, as Reid & Auld) made and supplied clocks to notable Scottish institutions including St Giles' Kirk.

Reid is chiefly remembered today for his Treatise on Clock and Watch Making, Theoretical and Practical (Edinburgh, 1826), a substantial technical manual covering escapements, compensation pendulums, chronometers, turret clocks and related subjects, which went through multiple editions and was influential as a teaching and reference text well beyond Scotland.

As a representative of the distinct Scottish clockmaking trade, centred on Edinburgh and Glasgow and historically organised through incorporations separate from London's Clockmakers' Company, Reid illustrates a national tradition that produced fine work but is comparatively little discussed in English-language horological literature relative to London.

Training, contributions & innovations

  • Published an influential technical treatise on clock and watch making that ran to several editions and was used as a reference well into the nineteenth century
  • Ran a leading Edinburgh clockmaking business supplying major Scottish institutional clocks
  • Represents the documented, if comparatively under-studied, Scottish clockmaking trade as distinct from the London trade

Inventions & patents

  • No specific patented mechanism attributed to Reid is confirmed in the sources consulted here; his significance rests on his technical writing and his workshop's production rather than a documented singular invention.

Signatures & markings on surviving work

  • Clocks signed 'Thomas Reid, Edinburgh'; later partnership work signed 'Reid & Auld, Edinburgh'

Collecting significance

Signed Reid clocks, particularly table and bracket clocks, appear periodically at auction and are valued as good-quality Scottish provincial work; his Treatise itself is a sought-after item among horological book collectors independent of any surviving clock by him.

Related photographs

Clock-watch MET 39989
Clock-watch MET 39989 — Unattributed Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC0. Wikimedia Commons file page
Clock-watch MET 40473
Clock-watch MET 40473 — Creator:David Terrier, CC0. Wikimedia Commons file page
Clock watch MET DP351934
Clock watch MET DP351934 — Unattributed Wikimedia Commons contributor, CC0. Wikimedia Commons file page

No confidently matched photograph of this subject has been found yet. These photographs show a closely related record, and are not examples of the type described on this page.

Sources & references

  1. Reid, T., Treatise on Clock and Watch Making, Theoretical and Practical (Edinburgh, 1826)
  2. Bonhams and other auction-house catalogue notes on signed Thomas Reid, Edinburgh clocks

Where sources disagree, the disagreement is stated rather than resolved silently.