A Chess-Supply Name, Not Yet a Secure Manufacturer
The plaque on the clock identifies “Schachversand T. Bschorr” of Augsburg, indicating a chess-supply or mail-order business. The plaque also carries an individual number.
A 1958 Augsburg directory cited in the surviving record documents Bschorr Ante, Heimarb., at the same street address, but the relationship between that entry, T. Bschorr, and the chess business remains uncertain. The evidence therefore supports associating the clock with Bschorr while stopping short of claiming that Bschorr necessarily manufactured every mechanical component.
A Mechanical Clock with Visible Seconds
The central device previously identified as a move counter is better understood as part of a planetary mechanism that makes seconds visible. The clock therefore remains mechanically unusual, but it should not be described as recording completed moves.
This correction removes the Bschorr clock from the move-counter lineage while preserving its value as evidence of specialized mechanical experimentation in postwar German chess timing.
The Patent-Pending Problem
The clock carries the marking D.R.P.a., meaning Deutsches Reichspatent angemeldet—German Reich patent applied for. The mark indicates that patent protection had been sought but does not prove that a patent was granted.
Dating the clock from that mark alone is difficult. The Reichspatentamt ceased business after the Second World War, while the new German Patent Office began operations in Munich in 1949. The closest known patent match is Ernst Jahn's DE818272C, filed in 1950 and published in 1951, which describes two separate clockworks and a planetary mechanism consistent with a visible-seconds function.
The evidence does not yet establish that the Bschorr clock directly implements Jahn's patent. The similarity is useful context, not proof.
An Attribution That Should Stay Open
The safest interpretation is that this is a rare German mechanical chess clock associated with Bschorr. The middle device is best understood as part of a seconds-display planetary movement, while Bschorr's exact role and the precise patent connection remain unresolved.
That uncertainty is part of the object's historical value. The clock shows why maker plates, patent marks, directories, and internal mechanisms have to be read together rather than treated as interchangeable forms of proof.
Historical Significance
Bschorr belongs on the German manufacturer page as an unusual mechanical chess clock, but not as a move-counter example. Its value lies in the unusual visible-seconds mechanism and the unresolved relationship between the retailer/brand, the patent-pending mark, and the underlying movement.