CLOCKS OF CENTURIES

Hokitika Guardian, 10 March 1931, Page 5

CLOCKS OF CENTURIES

SOME MECHANICAL, WONDERS, This year the Worshipful Company of C,'lockinnkers will celebrate its tercentenary. It was on August 22, 1631, that Charles 1. granted a charter constituting the cloekmnkers a body corporate under the name of “The Master, Wardens, and Fellowship of the Art or Mystery of Clock-making of the City of Condon.” Already there is an exhibition oi clocks and watches in the Guildhall — the company having no hall of its own —which is not only one of the most beautiful and remarkable in the world, but shows the steps by which English dock makers have established a supremacy in skill over clockmakers of all other nations.

The earliest examples are by foreign craftsmen. The hour glasses in which the sand runs clou in four hours were taken from French Government ships. An exquisite little clock set fn a jewelled monstrance came irom Augsburg. The smallest watch came from Geneva. Uis an eight-day watch, vet the size of the movement is less than a threepenny-piece. The rose on the back of the case was painted by an artist in enamel. It wa s made a century ago. but the cost even then was more than -£SO.

Near it is a clock-watch with Hebrew initials on it. so minutely engraved with a steel point that they are invisible to the naked eye. The most curious clock is one worked by hydrogen gas generated by the action of diluted sulphuric acid on a hall of zinc.

The emergence of native-born genius in clock-making begins with a long oight-dav clock of which the frames, wheels, and pinions are of solid oak. Tt was the first production of John Harrison. of Barrow, and was made by him in 1726 while he was still I oil owing the trade of a carpenter nt Foulbv near Pontefract. Yorkshire. This was so accurately made that it did not err a second in a month. In 1827. when he was 35. Harrison came to London to try for the £20.000 offer by the Government for a timekeeper that would enable longtitude at sen to he accurately determined. His first instrument was not exact enough to win the £20,000, but he perservered. reducing the error of three or four seconds a week- on long tropical sea voyages till ho won it in 1765.

There is now an English-made, freependulnm chronometer at Greenwich which corrects an error of l-20Oth part of a second, hut this almost infinite accuracy has been made possible by the fine succession of English clockmakers since the days or Harrison.