Global Impact with Small Town Integrity
The History of American Time & Signal Co.
Today, Jeff Baumgartner is the owner and CEO of American Time & Signal Co. But times were different in 1979 when he worked in procurement, marketing and sales at Crest Electronics in Dassel, Minnesota.
He developed a great understanding of the catalog sales business and spent his work days selling nurse call equipment to hospitals and other health care providers and facilities. The equipment was manufactured by Simplex, Faraday, Edwards, Standard Electric Time, IBM and Cincinnati Time, each of which also manufactured synchronized clock systems.
Jeff quickly realized that schools, hospitals and nursing homes needed a company to bridge the gap between the clock system manufacturers and a clock repair service.
In August, 1980, Jeff transformed that realization into a bricks-and-mortar company when he purchased Fuhr Time and Signal Company. He named his new venture American Time & Signal Company, opened for business in the old post office building on Dassel’s Main Street, and basically became a distributor of the products he previously sold.
He printed and mailed 16,000 catalogs using the line “We’ll repair your clocks.” Business grew so much within the first few months he needed help repairing all those clocks, so he hired the company’s first employee in February 1981.
American Time & Signal Co. continued to grow and acquired several key companies. As other clock companies stopped making clocks or went out of business, American Time & Signal grew by supporting old or obsolete clock systems, as well manufacturing and selling wall and system clocks, including:
1998: Radio Controlled Clocks accurate to one second in one million years, automatically resets at Daylight Saving Time and receives a signal from the NIST Atomic Clock in Ft. Collins, Colorado, several times a day to adjust the time.
2005: AllSync® Master Clocks remotely managed to provide synchronized control of secondary clocks, bell signals and electrical circuits.
2005: SiteSync IQ® Wireless Clocks to synchronize a facility with NIST by using cell phone tower signals (CDMA), satellite signals (GPS) or Ethernet-via a local area network connection (LAN).
2007: AllSet® Battery Clocks automatically adjust for Daylight Saving Time changes without signals or antennas.
2007: AllSync Plus® is the perfect replacement clock for any wired clock system.
2010: Power over Ethernet Clocks receive synchronized time updates and power from a facility’s network through a single Ethernet cable, eliminating the need for a master clock or electrical wiring.
Today: The company continues to grow and bring new products to the marketplace.
American Time & Signal is the known as “The Clock Experts.” Eighty-five people are employed in the company’s 40,000-square-foot headquarters in Dassel, repairing, manufacturing and providing more than 26,000 products to schools, universities, health care facilities, businesses and manufacturing plants around the world.
Thousands of schools, healthcare facilities, manufacturing plants and government offices across the country count on American Time & Signal Co. to keep them running on time, on schedule and on budget.
Please watch our videos, review our product catalog or call the Clock Experts at 800-328-8996 to learn more about American Time & Signal Co.
