The other day, my friends and I had a wonderful dinner at one of the local pubs here in Oberursel. The place Zum Schwanen is rather rustic and unique in its interior decoration.
So when the waiter asked us for the English translation of Stechuhr, all three of us (Welsh, German, and Japanese) were dumbfounded.
Not an obsolete device, but yet not much used in our daily conversation, we did not know the answer. The waiter explained that some of his English speaking patrons ask him what it is and he has a hard time explaining it.
I have researched and found the following terms:
clock card machine, punch clock, or time recorder
The Stechuhr is in the far left corner. Punch clock (from: to punch in/to punch out) seems to be the most appropriate translation.
Wikipedia uses the term “time clock”, which I seem to remember being used about 20 years ago when I was a student working in my holidays.
Since the students did not have their own cards, we had a “time sheet” instead where we had to enter the time by hand.