A form of provincial, weight-driven clock originally made in the vicinity of Morbier in the Franche*-Comté region  of France (Contée in the old spelling), near the Swiss frontier, from the late 17th century to the beginning of the 20th. They are sometimes called Morez clocks or Morbier clocks, from place names in the area.
They represented the first move towards the popularising of clocks in France, and in the 19th century they were to be found far and wide across the country, virtually ousting other local clock making traditions. They were often marked with the name and town of the vendor rather than those of the maker.

De wieg van deze klokken heeft hoog boven in de bergen van de Franse jura gestaan, in het gebied dat als het Franche-Comté, Contée volgens de oude spelling, bekend is.  Als Comtoises, afkomstig uit het Comté, zijn deze klokken de wereld ingegaan.

CLEPSYDRA, Latin, from Greek klepsudra : kleptein, kleps-, to steal + hudōr water, was an horological instrument of great antiquity, among the Egyptians and other eastern nations, probably before sun-dials were invented; though the name of the original inventor is not handed down to us ; the construction has been varied in different ages and countries, according to the variation of the different modes of reckoning time, but one principle is the basis of all the forms it has undergone, namely, the constant dropping, or running of water through a small aperture, out of one vessel into another.