DECATUR - Tom Williams makes plenty of time for his passion, but putting that love into words isn't so easy.

He prefers to show you.

So enter exhibit one, a stunning silver-cased pocket watch made by the Illinois Watch Co. headquartered, once upon a time, in our very own Springfield. It's the "A. Lincoln" model and made in 1919. The back of the watch is glass to better display the mechanism that pulses like a mechanical heart inside. Brass plates covered in elaborate damascened decoration hold tiny cogs turning on tinier axles that spin in holes lined with 21 ruby jewels.

The deep red gems show up under the glass like blood vessels and were chosen not only because they look good, but their unyielding surfaces take countless lifetimes to show any wear. The result is a thing of beauty that is a joy forever and will keep reliable time for nearly as long.

"Does that help you?" asked Williams, 51, who had been asked what fascinates him about antique clocks and watches, the collecting passion of his life. "I guess it's really the craftsmanship that impresses me � and it's a shame it's all gone now."

It turns out that America had mastered mass production and sold its products to the world long before Henry Ford ever thought of combining "Model" and "T" in the same sentence. Williams mentions a Yankee genius named Eli Terry, whose Connecticut factory shocked the world in 1808 by accepting an order for 4,000 clocks, which, using mass production, he filled in four years; he'd spent most of the time building machinery and gathering materials and churned out nearly all the clocks in a year.

America would go on to be a dominant player in global clock production well into the 20th century, when the rise of foreign competition and changing public tastes gradually called time out, and the factories disappeared.

Now that we are marooned in the modern age of cheap atomic time-keeping accuracy housed in soulless plastic and liquid crystal displays, collectors like Williams look back in wonder at the enduring brass, wooden and glass marvels that recorded the passing of our ancestors' lives.

Visitors wandering around the 80-year-old West End mansion Williams shares with his wife, Donna, find themselves on a crash course in the history of time-keeping. There's a treasure around every corner and a lesson behind every dial and elaborately carved case.

"This clock was made by a company called Boardman & Wells of Bristol, Conn., and dates from the mid-1830s," said Williams, showing off a 3-foot-tall mantle clock. There's a reverse-painted picture of what could be George Washington's Mount Vernon home decorating the front door glass, and the top of the clock bears an ageless painted message: "Time is Money."

Those thrifty Yankees practiced what they preached, building almost the entire clock mechanism out of wood, gears and all. Brass was expensive in the New World, but wood was plentiful and cheap.

"It was wooden parts that Eli Terry first learned how to mass produce," says Williams, explaining that it wasn't long before other manufacturers were jumping on the bandwagon.

"A lot of these clocks were actually sold off the back of a wagon, and you did not have to be wealthy to afford them," he said.

Then the tour goes on as we meet exotic wall clocks shaped like banjos - a stylish American design innovation - and showy mantle clocks with beveled glass sides for displaying their inner workings to mesmerized eyes.

Williams, who has haunted auctions, antiques stores and eBay in his relentless pursuit of time, is enjoying his own time out today, having found most of what he's wanted during the last 15 years of collecting. "Now I can sit back and enjoy them," he said.

His wife is happy to go along with that, although she couldn't resist buying him a clock for Christmas that he'd coveted in an antiques store. But even beauty belonging to the ages must not be over-wound, however.

"I'd made a rule that no more than one clock in a room is allowed to be running," she said. "Otherwise, the noise is just deafening."

Tony Reid can be reached at treid@herald-review.com or 421-7977.