Alarm clock

“ Although the modern alarm clock is a wonderfully effective piece of mechanism, it is, to say the least, very abrupt in its manner. It seldom confines its efforts to the chamber of its owner, but spreads its disturbance all over the building. ”

“ I am B-12, a metal person. If you read Day and the other progressive journals you will know that in some quarters of the galaxy there is considerable prejudice directed against us. It is ever so with minority races, and I do not complain. I merely make this statement so that you will understand about the alarm clock.
An alarm clock is a simple mechanism used by the Builders to shock themselves into consciousness after the periodic comas to which they are subject. It is obsolescent, but still used in such out of the way places as Phobos. ”

“ In private houses fitted with electric bells, a clock is often provided that disconnects the alarm in the morning and turns the current on to a bell placed in the servants' room. The movement by which this is done is something similar to that of the ordinary alarm-clock. ”

“ I have even seen pictures of contrivances that would throw a man out of bed, light the kitchen fire, and turn on the cold water in the bathtub at a stated hour, but they never came into general use. As a matter of fact, the perfect alarm clock has never been invented, but the other night I got an idea. ”

“ Any one entering in the dark and unaware of the existence of the alarm is liable to break the thread and ring the bell.
An Electric Alarm It is often desirable to arrange an electrical alarm clock so that a bell will ring continuously until shut off. ”

“ "You're my alarm clock," the boy said.
"Age is my alarm clock," the old man said. "Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?"
"I don't know," the boy said. "All I know is that young boys sleep late and hard." ”

“ And I can stop clocks.
Take this morning, for example. I had set my alarm for five-thirty because I had to catch the seven o'clock plane at San Francisco International Airport. This being earlier than I usually get up, it seems all I did during the night was feel my way past the escapement and balance wheel to see where the notch for the alarm was. The last time I did it there was just the merest fraction of an inch between the pawl and the notch. So I sighed and moved to the balance wheel and its delicate ribbon of spiraling steel. ”

“ July 11.—Much human ingenuity has been devoted to the invention of alarm clocks, the purpose being to get a kind that you cannot get used to hearing or silence by knocking the tail feathers out of it with a well-aimed shoe. ”

“ While the superstition did prevail, there was nothing so calculated to strike terror to the very marrow of the appalled listeners as the noise of this harmless little beetle, only a quarter of an inch long, tapping away in the decaying woodwork of an ancient wainscot.
There is no end of legendary matter concerning clocks. Sometimes nervous people have been frightened half out of their wits at hearing a clock that had stopped, suddenly strike the hour. Clocks have been known to stop, too, at the exact hour when a death took place in the house. ”

“ Nevertheless, I cannot be accused of having forgotten the information, and to prove it I will say that what I intended to add was that at night the numerals on the dial are not only illuminated but a flashlight from the tower sends [160] out the time to those too far away either to see the face of the clock or hear it strike. ”

“ We now, also, have automatic clock systems, in which a master clock controls or gives movement to the hands of distant clock dials by electric currents sent out over the connecting or circuit wires. Automatic electric signals are made when fire breaks out in a building, and alarms are similarly rung when a burglar breaks in. ”

“ Nearly all, if not quite the whole, of the mean-time clocks in the Observatory are driven by a current controlled by the standard clock, as also is a seconds relay, a Fig. 129. The clock controls, by currents sent every second by the relay, one or two clocks in London, by special wires.
So long ago as the year 1840 Sir Charles Wheatstone read a paper before the Royal Society in which he described an apparatus for controlling any number of clocks by one standard clock at a distance away. ”

“ The clock controlled by wireless telegraphy will doubtless undergo a rapid development from the time when it is first introduced. Practically the same principles which enable [Pg 218] the electrician to utilise the "Hertzian waves," or ether vibrations, for the purpose of setting a clock right once a day, or once an hour, will permit of an impulse, true to time, being sent from the central station every second, or every minute, and when this has been accomplished it will be seen that there is no more use for the maintenance of elaborate clockworks at any place excepting the central station. ”

“ It is very common to hear a clock make a creaking noise, and this leads inexperienced persons to think it has become dry inside. This is not so, and you will always find it to be caused by the loop of the crutch wire where it touches the rod; apply a little oil and it will cure it. ”

“ There are two kinds of clocks. There is the clock that is always wrong, and that knows it is wrong, and glories in it; and there is the clock that is always right—except when you rely upon it, and then it is more wrong than you would think a clock could be in a civilized country. ”

“ In the calm of the hard frost outside, the clear-cut strokes of the town clock counting off midnight penetrated the quietness of his suspended animation. ”

“ The most perfect escapement would be that one which should perform its duty with the least influence upon the time of oscillation or vibration of the regulating organ. The stoppage of the train by the escapement is brought about in different ways, which may be gathered under three heads or categories. In the two which we shall mention first, the stop is effected directly upon the axis of the regulator, or against a piece which forms a part of that axis; the tooth of the escape wheel at the moment of its disengagement remains supported upon or against that stop. ”

“ The sense of security more frequently springs from habit than from conviction, and for this reason it often subsists after such a change in the conditions as might have been expected to suggest alarm. The lapse of time during which a given event has not happened, is, in this logic of habit, constantly alleged as a reason why the event should never happen, even when the lapse of time is precisely the added condition which makes the event imminent. ”

“ The clock struck the solemn hour of one, that hour when fancy stalks outside reason, and malignant possibilities stand rock-firm as facts. ”

“ One night—it was in June, ’89—there came a ring to my bell, about the hour when a man gives his first yawn and glances at the clock. ”

“ It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to harken to the sound; ”

“ I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;
For now hath time made me his numb’ring clock.
My thoughts are minutes, and with sighs they jar
Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch,
Whereto my finger, like a dial’s point,
Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.
Now, sir, the sound that tells what hour it is
Are clamorous groans which strike upon my heart,
Which is the bell. So sighs and tears and groans
Show minutes, times, and hours. ”

“ How he loathed his life-long slavery to the clock, that pervasive intimate negative opposed to every spontaneous impulse. “It’s the clock that is the nay-sayer to life,” he thought, as he climbed the cellar stairs. ”

“ A clock stopped — not the mantel's;
Geneva's farthest skill
Can't put the puppet bowing
That just now dangled still.
An awe came on the trinket!
The figures hunched with pain,
Then quivered out of decimals
Into degreeless noon.
It will not stir for doctors,
This pendulum of snow;
The shopman importunes it,
While cool, concernless No
Nods from the gilded pointers,
Nods from the seconds slim,
Decades of arrogance between
The dial life and him. ”

“ While fancy, like the finger of a clock,
Runs the great circuit, and is still at home. ”

“ One o'clock. With her fork she would tantalize the heart of an adoring artichoke, while her escort served himself up in the thick, dripping sentences of an enraptured man.
Four o'clock: her little feet moving to melody, her face distinct in the crowd, her partner happy as a petted puppy and mad as the immemorial hatter.... ”

“ the ornamental gilt rimmed blue candlesticks on the ends of the mantelshelf, also glass- draped with lustres, and the ormolu clock under a glass-cover in the middle between them, its uselessness emphasized by a cheap American clock disrespectfully placed beside it and now indicating 12 o'clock noon, all combine with the black marble which gives the fireplace the air of a miniature family vault, to suggest early Victorian commercial respectability, belief in money, Bible fetichism, fear of hell always at war with fear of poverty, instinctive horror of the passionate character of art, love and Roman Catholic religion, and all the first fruits of plutocracy in the early generations of the industrial revolution. There is no shadow of this on the two persons who are occupying the room just now. ”

“ After luncheon the sun, conscious that it was Saturday, would blaze an hour longer in the zenith, and when some one, thinking that we were late in starting for our walk, said, "What, only two o'clock!" ”

“ The hours of folly are measured by the clock, but of wisdom no clock can measure. ”

“ At four o'clock in the morning everybody in the tent was still asleep, exhausted by the terrible march of the previous day. ”

“ The young man had killed himself; but she did not pity him; with the clock striking the hour, one, two, three, she did not pity him, with all this going on. There! the old lady had put out her light! the whole house was dark now with this going on, she repeated, and the words came to her, Fear no more the heat of the sun. She must go back to them. But what an extraordinary night! She felt somehow very like him—the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away while they went on living. The clock was striking. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. ”

“ We may, indeed, say that the hour of death is uncertain, but when we say so we represent that hour to ourselves as situated in a vague and remote expanse of time, it never occurs to us that it can have any connexion with the day that has already dawned, or may signify that death—or its first assault and partial possession of us, after which it will never leave hold of us again—may occur this very afternoon, so far from uncertain, this afternoon every hour of which has already been allotted to some occupation. You make a point of taking your drive every day so that in a month’s time you will have had the full benefit of the fresh air; ”

“ There's the very prime of the morning gone long before that time. A person who has not done one half his day's work by ten o'clock, runs a chance of leaving the other half undone." ”

“ The clock indicates the moment—but what does eternity indicate? ”

“ The nimble lie Is like the second-hand upon a clock; We see it fly; while the hour-hand of truth Seems to stand still, and yet it moves unseen, And wins at last, for the clock will not strike Till it has reached the goal. ”

“ The next train left at seven o'clock. To catch that one, he would have to go in a mad rush. The sample collection wasn't packed up yet, and he really didn't feel particularly fresh and active. ”

“ Intermittently she caught the gist of his sentences and supplied the rest from her subconscious, as one picks up the striking of a clock in the middle with only the rhythm of the first uncounted strokes lingering in the mind. ”

“ No sounds but the steady ticking of the clock, and the lumpish snoring of a large dog stretched on a mat outside the dining-room door, disturbed the mysterious morning stillness of hall and staircase. ”

“ It appears, from all this, that our eyes are uncertain. Two persons look at the same clock and there is a difference of two or three minutes in their reading of the time. One has a tendency to put back the hands, the other to advance them. Let us not too confidently try to play the part of the third person who wishes to set the first two aright; it may well happen that we are mistaken in turn. Besides, in our daily life, we have less need of certainty than of a certain approximation to certainty. Let us learn how to see, but without looking too closely at things and men: ”

“ Little things recall us to earth: the clock struck in the hall; that sufficed; I turned from moon and stars, opened a side-door and went in. ”

“ The morning was hot, and the exercise of reading left her mind contracting and expanding like the main-spring of a clock, and the small noises of midday, which one can ascribe to no definite cause, in a regular rhythm. It was all very real, very big, very impersonal, and after a moment or two she began to raise her first finger and to let it fall on the arm of her chair so as to bring back to herself some consciousness of her own existence. She was next overcome by the unspeakable queerness of the fact that she should be sitting in an arm-chair, in the morning, in the middle of the world. ”