James W. Bryce

Who was James W. Bryce?

James Wares Bryce was an American engineer and inventor. In 1936, on the centenary of the United States Patent Office, he was honored as one of the country’s 10 greatest living inventors.

Born in New York City on September 5, 1880, his father was from Edinburgh and mother was from Wick. He studied for three years at City College of New York before taking a draftsman position in 1900. In 1903 he worked for J. Walter Christie and helped develop a front-wheel-drive racing car. In 1904 he went to work for H. T. Goss, who later formed the partnership of Goss & Bryce. One of their contracts was with Bundy Manufacturing Company who made time clocks used to track hours worked by industrial workers. He took a position at the Computing Tabulating Recording Company in 1917 as supervising engineer of the division that developed time recording machines.

Time clocks used punched cards to record workers in and out times. Subtracting these two gave hours worked on each day, and adding them all up gave total work time. This was easily automated by mechanical machines. However, to compute wages, the hours must be multiplied by salary per hour.