A hanging clock with a large wooden dial often painted black, with gilded numerals and short trunk; there was no glass over the dial. The trunk was usually oblong and panelled, but was sometimes bulbous or fiddle-shaped. These clocks appear to have come into use about the middle of the eighteenth century, and continued to be made until about the first quarter of the nineteenth. The variety was considerable. We may trace in the Act of Parliament Clock the ancestor of the common office clock of the present day with a dial and no body. The origin of the name has been much disputed and has never been satisfactorily settled. It has been suggested that inn-keepers adopted this type of clock for the convenience of their customers when an Act of 1797 imposed a duty of five shillings per annum upon every time-keeper, in spite of the fact that the Act of Parliament Clock was common long before that date. The suggestion has also been made that all inns and posting-houses were required to keep a clock in a public room, but there appears to be no record of Parliament having ever imposed such a requirement. Many examples bear the maker's name. These clocks varied in height from 3 ft. 9 ins. to about 5 ft.