I remember about 20 years ago a gentleman from Queens or Nassau County,
New York, who has since passed away, spent quite a bit of time
photographing and cataloging the clock collection in the Forbidden
City Palace Museum.  He also photographed a rather extensive exposition
that was put on during which many of the clocks were demonstrated.

As a thank you the Chinese government gave him one of the clocks by
James Cox from England.  I visited his home once and remember discussing
his James Cox clock, which he kept in a vault.  (There is also at least
one James Cox clock in the basement of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg,
Russia.)

This individual wrote a series of extensive articles for the NAWCC
Journal on these clocks.  I suspect that his James Cox clock and
research, photos, etc. are not with the NAWCC in Columbia, Pennsylvania.
James Cox made clocks that looked nice and did things on the hour,
quarter hour, etc.  They rarely kept time, which didn't matter as the
Chinese system of time keeping was totally different from anything
we know.

These clocks were to bribe Chinese officials to allow trade between
their territory and England.  Very few were ever sold.  I remember an
elephant with a pagoda on his back that at each hour raised up one
"floor" until it reached 10 "stories" at noon and then collapsed.  Most
of the clocks had various types of automaton sections that did various
things, such as spin, wave, etc.

The Chinese also tried to make copies of some of the clocks, down to
James Cox's signature.  But since these people weren't familiar with
the English alphabet, they usually messed up some of the letters.  It
didn't make any difference to them as none of them could read English
anyway.

There were other clock makers who made clocks for bribing the emperor
and other officials, but none were as famous as James Cox.  I have
heard that during the American Revolution almost half of the British
foreign expenses went to bribing Chinese officials with fancy toys,
most prominent among them being these clocks.

Vincent Morgan, New York City