This incredibly rare French automaton timepiece pays homage to the first flying machines. It features an airplane that “flies” with a revolving propeller, around the gantry. The gantry houses a clock, thermometer and barometer. An almost identical clock was housed at the Time Museum, Rockford, Illinois. When the collection of the museum was sold at a Sotheby’s auction in 2002, that clock brought a hammer price of an impressive $312,000.

For more than 30 years, the Time Museum was perhaps the most comprehensive and important collection of timepieces in the world. With the daunting task of documenting and illustrating man’s efforts to measure the passage of time, the Time Museum amassed more than 1,500 timepieces representing more