Which country is thought to be the first where a cuckoo clock was invented?

A cuckoo clock is, typically, a pendulum clock that strikes the hours with a sound like a common cuckoo call and has an automated cuckoo bird that moves with each note. The mechanism to produce the cuckoo call has been in use since the middle of the 1700s and has remained almost without variation.

It is unknown who invented the cuckoo clock and where the first one was made. It is thought that much of its development and evolution was made in the Black Forest area in southwestern Germany (in the modern state of Baden-Württemberg), the region where the cuckoo clock was popularized. These clocks were exported to the rest of the world from the mid-1850s on.

In 1629, many decades before clockmaking was established in the Black Forest, an Augsburg nobleman by the name of Philipp Hainhofer (1578–1647) penned the first known description of a modern cuckoo clock. The clock belonged to Prince Elector August von Sachsen.

Today, the cuckoo clock is one of the favourite souvenirs of travellers in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and northeastern France. It has become a cultural icon of Germany.