My jour­ney to the Atmos clock …

The Heeg fami­ly and the Atmos

For more than 30 years, we as the Heeg fami­ly have been working on ATMOS clocks. Cap­ti­va­ted by their spell, we have gathe­red a gre­at deal of expe­ri­ence, ser­viced a lar­ge num­ber of very dif­fe­rent ATMOS models and cali­bres and – whe­re they were in poor con­di­ti­on – even rebuilt some of them. Our own seri­al num­ber regis­ter for ATMOS clocks beg­ins in 1930 and curr­ent­ly ends at around 2017 (… and is still being con­tin­ued). We have had seve­ral clocks from every year of pro­duc­tion on our work­bench and ser­viced them. Over time we have built up a lar­ge net­work and are deligh­ted about every old and new contact.

How it all started

Thin­king back, I always enjoy­ed clocks, even befo­re I saw my first Atmos. At around 20 I bought my first “Lenz­kirch” regu­la­tor and a litt­le later my first pocket watch. Seve­ral stays of some years in Gre­at Bri­tain – with the won­derful “antique fairs” in the coun­try­si­de – brought tog­e­ther a small coll­ec­tion of pocket wat­ches. And of cour­se many a wrist­watch found its way to me as well. So by then I had alre­a­dy taken apart the odd ver­ge pocket watch and spent time with unu­su­al movements.

Around 1990, after we had moved, my son was once asked at his new nur­sery school what his father did for a living. Not quite four years old, he ans­we­red, to the nur­sery teacher’s asto­nish­ment: “My dad is a sol­dier, but real­ly – he is a watch­ma­ker!” He had sim­ply wat­ched me closely.

Then in 1992 – rather by chan­ce – I saw my first ATMOS and was fasci­na­ted. As a result, I gave away all my other clocks pie­ce by pie­ce and slow­ly found a few more ATMOS. And so, litt­le by litt­le, I came to spe­cia­li­se exclu­si­ve­ly in ATMOS clocks – I sim­ply could not keep the fasci­na­ti­on of this clock at bay.

Work­shop and sales

In the mean­ti­me I began offe­ring ser­vicing for ATMOS clocks on eBay under the name “Zz-zahn­raed­chen”, and occa­sio­nal­ly lis­ting ATMOS clocks the­re for sale. We recei­ve clocks from pri­va­te cus­to­mers as well as “pati­ents” from various watch retail­ers. We are hono­u­red by this trust – and we thank you for it!

We regu­lar­ly offer some of our tre­asu­res for sale here as well. With the clocks we offer, you can be sure of buy­ing a com­ple­te­ly ser­viced, ful­ly working clock. We descri­be each clock as accu­ra­te­ly as we can, and you can always look for­ward to a beau­tiful pie­ce. Should a pro­blem ever ari­se – which can always hap­pen with the­se antique tre­asu­res – I have always, in the customer’s inte­rest, che­cked the clock again for up to two years after purcha­se or ser­vice and, whe­re neces­sa­ry, set it going again.

We enjoy working on and with this clock. And the peo­p­le who take an inte­rest in the­se extra­or­di­na­ry clocks have always been plea­sant peo­p­le to talk to – and not infre­quent­ly they have even beco­me friends.

Rüdi­ger Heeg