WONDER CLOCKS OF THE WORLD

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 4 November 1933, Page 14

WONDER CLOCKS OF THE WORLD

Convict’s Timepiece Made From Wood

'A - BRONZE lion, twelve feet high, which will roar at noon, and a rooster, six feet high, which will crow at sunrise and sunset, are features of a huge new clock erected in Messina, Sicily, says the “New York Times.”

Another addition to the world’s wonder clocks is one constructed by a convict who recently finished a term in a 'Continental penitentiary. Every part of his strange timepiece, down to the tiniest wheel, is made of wood. The clock contains "Shirty different watches, each showing the correct time in one of the principal cities of the world. Another feature is a calendar which shows the passing of the days, weeks, and months. Not long ago an unusual clock was made by a Swiss engineer. Included in its mechanism is a barometer, the apparatus being so arranged that variations in atmospheric pressure furnish the “power” necessary to keep the clock going. A clock installed at the parish church of Tirley in the English country of Gloucestershire,, as a memorial to an officer who fell in the war, was made •by John Carter, a wheelwright, from pieces of old iron, among them a spade, a pistol barrel, a windlass, and various farming implements. The winding handle was made from a scythe. The clock keeps excellent time. A remarkable piece of workmanship is Bohemia’s glass cloek. It took several years of laoour on the part of Joseph Thayer, a glass worker of that country, to make this clock entirely of glas's, even to the tiniest screw.

Some ancient clocks were made t? play tricks. One such is at Stettin, Germany. In the centre of its dial is the large and hideous face of a bearded man, who every second rolls his eyes from side to side. In his mouth ho holds a metal plate telling the day of ithe month. The clock bears the date 1736. Another clock, made in Switzerland several centuries ago, was constructed to put out a tongue at people who stopped to see what time it was. An eight-day clock smaller than a dime and more than 100 years old is one of the treasures of the Worshipful Company of Cloekmakers in London. Incidentally, King George owns nearly 1000 clocks, one of the largest collections of timepieces. . More than 250 of

the King’s clocks are distributed throughout Windsor -Castle; Buckingham Palace has about 160.

Brequet’s “sympathetic clock,” for which ■ George IY paid a large sum, is’ in Buckingham Palace. The dial is George TV’s gold watch, with chain and keys attached; at the stroke of 12 a steel needle runs up and automatically adjusts the minute hand. At Windsor there is a wonderful old clock that has been going for more than a century. Like Big Ben, the Parliament clock, it varies only a fraction of a second a day. It is in the turret over the State entrance to the grand quadrangle. When the wind is favourable its chimes can be heard three miles away. It is a mere infant, however, compared with the oldest turret clock in England, which is presumably the one in the great tower of Salisbury Catheural. Reeo’rds show that the mechanism exists in 1356; it continued to work until 1884.

In bygone days running water was largely used to measure time, and water clocks can be found all over the ancient w-orld. Some were very simple; others were of astonishing delicacy and complexity. Water clocks had the disadvantage that, as the pressure of fluid decreased, the rate of flow decreased also. In Greece and Rome, where the hour was a variable unit, being onetwelfth part of the period of daylight or night, as the case might be, they had also be frequently adjusted. The. attempt to allow for these two anomalies led the great cloekmakers of Alexandria to devise miracles of ingenuity, among them a famous clock set up by Ctesibius in the Temple of Arsinoe. Every twenty-four hours a little winged boy with a pointer in his hand ascended a column, pointing to the hours marked on it. At the end of the day he fell to the bottom and began again. The motive power w T as supplied by the tears of another winged boy, who Avept continually into a bronze bow-1.

This was only one of many fluid clocks; there was even a milk clock in an Egyptian temple. The measurement of time by the burning of candles, which for long was popular in monasteries, is an application of an essentially similar idea.