Ronald Reagan gave one to Mikhail Gorbachev. Gerald Ford was a fan. Bill Nye The Science Guy keeps one in his New York apartment. Henry Kissinger and Frank Sinatra both owned one. Malcolm Forbes had five. Perhaps peak celebrity endorsement comes in the form of Admiral Greer having one in The Hunt for Red October.
The Geochron World Time Indicator—a 2- by 3-foot world map with the ability to track Earth’s daylight in real time, a world first when invented—has fascinated owners for decades. The New York Times once described the Geochron as a “Rolex on the wall for the person who has everything but wants more.”
Perhaps it is this luxury appeal attracting former premiers, engineers, and fictional commanders that keeps such a mechanical, analog device relevant in a digital world—one where it may soon be necessary to establish separate lunar time and where the most accurate atomic clock deviates by one second once every 30 billion years.
“Most of our customers share a trait: They’re highly educated and have taken the time to nurture a worldview beyond their own silo,” says Patrick Bolan, owner of Geochron since 2015. “The Geochron reflects that desire to be a citizen of the world.” Citizens with means: Each is assembled upon demand, with prices starting just under $3,000.
Admiral Greer with his Geochron in The Hunt for Red October.
Courtesy of Geochron
This is how it works: Behind the backlit map is a mechanism that defines light and shaded areas that are also stationary relative to the movement of the map. So, as time progresses, different areas of the world are shown to be experiencing daytime and night. The center of the lit area lines up with the midday on the stationary time strip. On the bottom, you also get a day and month readout, with minutes above.
Bolan bought the company on something of a lark. After a successful run in construction management, and equipped with an engineering degree, Bolan decided to treat himself to a broken Geochron he planned to repair. When his eBay spoils arrived, Bolan discovered the guts of a precision machine he couldn’t fix on his own. That led him to contact the manufacturer.
Life, like the Geochron, is about being in the right place at the right time: The manufacturer turned out to be just a few miles down the road from Bolan, and, as luck would have it, the family of James Kilburg Sr., the Geochron’s inventor, had just put the company up for sale. Bolan soon found himself with not just a wall-art-size timepiece in need of repair—he now also had an entire company to fix.
The Geochron’s story began in 1962 in Redwood City, California. Kilburg, a consulting engineer from Luxembourg who had contributed to the creation of the car cigarette lighter and a device to remove pits from maraschino cherries, was visiting family in Europe when his wife in the US called to speak to him. The telephone operator told her it was daytime in Luxembourg, but it was actually 2 o’clock in the morning, and so the entire household was disturbed. It was this intrusion that gave Kilburg the impetus to create the clock. Soon, United Airlines had made orders; so too Bank of America, purchasing the clocks for its overseas offices.
President Barack Obama receiving a briefing at FEMA headquarters, Washington, D.C., in May, 2016 with a Geochron in the background.
Photograph: Kevin Dietsch-pool/Getty Images
For decades, it was the only way to visualize global time and daylight before the internet. Despite the company changing hands and moving from California to Oregon, then to Colorado Springs, Colorado, the Geochron has remained a niche product with a passionate fan base. Only a handful of skilled technicians can craft these complex timepieces, and its limited production has kept it an exclusive item rather than a mass-market success.
Today, Bolan’s passion for the Geochron still shines: He has expanded to digital offerings in the hope of ensuring this anachronistic timepiece stays relevant in a world driven by data and convenience. During the pandemic, Bolan took the show on the road, riding his BMW RT motorcycle around the lower 48 to visit a Geochron owner in every state. That trek let him put faces to purchase orders, giving Bolan better insight into clock’s small but fervent fanbase.
Though the timing didn’t align, one of the potential visits was with the owner of Long Island Watch, Marc Frankel, whose Geochron will look familiar to anyone who views his YouTube videos. Frankel, who trained as an aerospace engineer, is quick to point out not just that he has a Geochron but also the intricacies of a device that accurately captures the sun’s analemma, its figure-eight path in the sky.
Frankel first encountered the clock in a Sharper Image catalog, which was very much in line with the clientele Geochron had targeted for decades. “Then I saw it in Hunt for Red October, and I was like, ‘Oh my God!’—and I know Reagan had one as well,” Frankel says. “I love the map of the sunlight curve and how, over time, through the orbit of the planet, the sun hits it. It just changes, and that’s amazing to me. I looked into getting something that could mimic it, but a screensaver for 99 cents wasn’t mechanical enough for me. So, I ponied up the few grand, and it’s been with me ever since.”
Frankel draws parallels between the Geochron and an automatic watch: While a 99-cent screensaver, or an Apple Watch, can show you all the same information and so much more, the mechanical nature of a Geochron and a self-winding watch tickles some nerdy fiber. To Frankel, that mechanical nervous system keeps the Geochron relevant.
“It’s like an old Trans Am. This is history,” Frankel says, pointing to his Geochron. “I can’t imagine it’s a company that’s going to scale. I mean, this isn’t going to be a chicken in every pot. This is definitely an enthusiast item. Some people look at it and think, ‘That’s it?’ But others are like, ‘Oh, that’s so cool.’”
The internal mechanics of the Geochron can accurately illustrate the sun’s analemma, the figure-eight path it takes through the sky.
Courtesy of Geochron
In at least some effort to keep up with the times, Bolan continues producing the analog Geochron with improved internal mechanisms. The most basic analog model, a Kilburg vinyl, retails for $2,895, while the Live Edge model starts at $4,895. Owners of vintage Geochrons can get their timepieces restored to factory condition or upgrade the innards to feature the company’s Dura Drive with better motors, gears, and linkages to run the Geochron while cutting power consumption by 30 percent.
Perhaps more importantly for the future of this wall clock, the company has evolved into digital offerings, which come at a more accessible price: The Geochron Digital Atlas 2 4K costs $500 and requires only a 4K monitor or TV as a display.
The digital models take up less space (or no more at all if you’re using your TV) and of course don’t require a specialist for repairs. They also offer copious layer options that can display visualizations of earthquakes, global air quality, tidal heights, commercial aviation paths, population heat maps, satellite orbits, and just about any nerdy thing that comes in map form. There’s a flavor for every kind of cartophile. Of course, the one thing missing is the clever mechanics tracing the sun’s journey across the Earth, in sync with the planet’s 23.4-degree axial tilt against the star.
The company has a digital version (left) of the mechanical Geochron, which costs just $500 and requires only a 4K monitor or TV as a display.
Courtesy of Geochron
For the next phase of the Geochron, Bolan is turning his gaze to the world of aviation. “I need to come out with a model specific to aviators, with live data. We have a lot of aviation people asking for ADS-B data and the ability to track tail numbers and flights,” he says. The world-map design of the clock would lend itself well to a flight data feature, possibly taking cues from @ElonJetNextDay so owners could observe Tesla’s CEO as he crisscrosses the globe.
But, in the end, Geochron sales will never look like a hockey stick going up and to the right. Just 30,000 mechanical Geochrons have been built over the years. It’s a small American business that caters to map-data devotees. And that’s just fine for someone like Bolan. If the Geochron proves one thing, it’s this: We can’t control time. We can only observe it.
“We’re still just totally human and hardwired for stories. Our brains haven’t changed, though the world around us has,” Bolan says. “Human activity and the news is always going to be incredibly relevant to us. I want that on a map that displays full-time. That’s a beautiful way to see the world.”