By the Clock

THE FAMILY

Twelve years ago his daughter came to him with a fertility chart, asked him what all the graphs and numbers meant. After puzzling over it for hours, Los Angeles Lawyer Maurice Gordon decided that the chart was far too complicated for the average woman to understand, set to work to invent a clock that would do the calculations automatically.

Last week Gordon's clock finally reached the marketplace. Sold by the Sessions Clock Co. for $19.95 and coyly named "The Lady," it is designed to aid memory and math in the practice of the rhythm method of birth control. Essentially, it is a calendar clock with refinements. First, the lady of the house calculates her shortest and longest menstrual cycles. After consulting a simplified table that comes with the instructions, she turns, pulls and pushes the clock's "cycle dial" until she has locked into it information concerning her period of probable fertility. At the beginning of each menstrual cycle, she merely sets the dial in the warning window to "1," then keeps an eye peeled on the window, which automatically turns red on the first day of probable fertility, remains red till the last.

The Lady seems to have met a long-felt need. In its first three days on the shelves, 5,100 of the clocks were sold across the country. The Lady is, of course, subject to the dangers of error inherent in the rhythm method. And it relies on the dependability of the information fed into it. Physicians warn potential buyers that they who are not sure of their shortest and longest menstrual cycles should keep careful records for at least a year before going by the clock.

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