A WONDERFUL CLOCK.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 26, 30 December 1925, Page 3

A WONDERFUL CLOCK.

GUIDE TO MANY THINGS. TIME, TIDES AND MOONS. From the mind of a elockmaker in the little Yorkshire town of Holmfirth has been evolved a wonderful clock which, with the exception of forecasting the weather, tells one all that he wants to know about time, tide and the state of the moon. Many other things it also tells, and tells them with bells. Tlieso are some of the things this remarkable clock does and tells: Shows the equation of time, phases, age and rotation of the moon, time of tide and whether high or low, and day of the week, month and year. Hillside, village and moorland folk have walked from far and near to see this “grandfather” clock, the fame of which has spread far and wide. The clock’s musical accomplishments are even more interesting. It plays one of six tunes on tubes every three hours of the day, and sounds the quarters on Westminster chimes on 16 gongs. On Sundays, at 10.25 a.m., and 6.25 p.m., it gives a peal of Kent treble bells to announce that church time is approaching. And it has one estimable virtue. It is silent in the quiet hours of the night. THE MAN IN THE MOON. The clock face is of silver and gilt workmanship. At the top, showing through a Hole, is the disc of the moon—with the man in it —which goes round once in every 23 hours 57 seconds. Just below this is a model of a vessel in full sail of shining brass, which visibly rises or falls as the tides flow and ebb. This has been mathematically worked out oil a cam arrangement. From the centre, of course, work the finely-graved hands which show the ordinary time, and on each side of the pivotal screw are other small dials—that on the left showing the ago of tho moon and the time of high or low tide, and that on the right showing the height of the tide. Below, set on brass discs, is the calendar which, the inventor claims, only requires adjusting once in 100 years. Similarly he claims that the movements of the moon are so calendared that the clock should be only a few seconds wrong in a century. Mr Cold well, the maker of the clock, a studious man of 51 years, who looks much more the inventor than he does the modern jeweller’s shopkeeper, says that the invention was liis own. It was not knowingly modelled on any other specimen, and was the work of his spare time during the past 12 years. “I have been interested in the cloclcmaker’s art,” he said recently, “since I was a schoolboy. I was born at Kirkburton, and for a time, my father was a clockdesigner at Bramley, near Leeds. I broke away from the family life in the textile trade, and I became an apprentice to the clock-making trade at Clark’s, in Huddersfield.” “It must have been 20 years since I first began to think about this clock, which is so designed that it should keep exact time to a second in a month. I drew plans, improved on them, read books and studied mathematics, with the result you see before you. My drawings I reduced to patterns, and with the assistance of two Holmfirth boy apprentices, Leonard Stocks, who has since left me, and Albert Hirst, who is still with me, we cut out the patterns on sheet and brass, and I finished the parts off. “I calculate it will take another two years to produce the finished article, and though I have already been offered a £250 inotor-car in exchange for it I shall not sell. It’s valde to me as a homo ornament and time-keeper I reckon at about £SOO. But I want it at home.”