Bell (timekeeping)

“ In ancient books the word cloche simply stands for a bell,—the monks being accustomed to ring a bell at certain periods marked for them by their sun-dials or hour-glasses, and 'What's o'clock?' in old writers is often merely equivalent to the inquiry, 'What hour was last struck by bell?' The word horologe or hour-measurer of course equally applied to the sun-dial, the clepsydra, and the clock, and this convertibility of terms makes it all the more difficult to trace the point at which the newer invention began. ”

“ The ten o'clock bell is going to ring in two minutes. Our day is divided into sections by bells. We eat and sleep and study by bells. It's very enlivening; I feel like a fire horse all of the time. There it goes! ”

“ We must find a little space for striking clocks. The simplest is one blow at each hour just to draw attention to the clock. Striking the hours and also one blow at each half hour as well as the quarter double blow, called “ting tong” quarters, are too well known to need description. The next stage after this is “chiming quarters” with three or more musical gongs, or bells. One of the best strikers I have has three trains, three weights and four bells. It strikes the hour on a large bell and two minutes after the hour it strikes it again, so as to give you another chance to count correctly. ”

“ The old bracket clock we have just sent home, you will recall, played seven different tunes. Purchasers liked the notion of having music to mark the hours. Later on, however, when they became better educated, the frivolous little tinkling jigs and dances gave place to a more dignified and sonorous striking of a single rich-toned bell, or a group of such bells, and resulted in the Westminster chimes or others not unlike them. ”

“ If I were you, Alan, I should appeal to the former by suggesting to Guidet the probability of an attack on the clock itself."
On the way out-of-doors, Alan looked into the room where the Frenchman sat staring at a diagram roughly drawn on notepaper. He wagged his head drearily.
"I fear I can do nothings," he sighed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On this dial, Fig. 19, nine is noon, as usual, and is on top side of dial. Hand points to three quarters past seven, that is, a quarter to six, near sunset. Between the bell and the top of the clock body two horizontal balances, having small weights hung on them, are plainly shown, and the clock has two verge escapements—one connected with each balance, or “foliot.” Let us suppose a long day coming to a close at sunset, just as the hand indicates. The upper balance, which is the slow one, has been swinging backwards and forwards measuring the long hours of the day. ”

“ At that moment a bell rang in the distance. "Excuse me, sir," said Caw and went out.
"What's the man driving at?" said Alan with natural enough impatience.
"Well," his friend replied slowly, "doesn't it seem queer that the clock should have been put there simply to proclaim when the year was up? A grocer's calendar could have done that much—"
"By Jove!" Christopher's nephew strode across the room and stood staring at the timepiece. "Teddy," he said at last, "if it weren't for that blighted Green Box, I'd be imagining all sorts of—"
Caw entered with a telegram on a tray. "For you, Mr. ”

“ Such clocks hardly ever bring the full sound out of the bells ; because, in order to do so, the weights would have to be so heavy, and the clock so large, as to increase the price considerably. A good bell, even of the ordinary thickness, which is less than in the Westminster bells, requires a hammer of not less than ^th of its weight, rising 8 or 9 inches from the bell, to bring out the full sound ; and therefore, allowing for the loss by friction, a bell of 30 cwt, which is not an uncommon tenor for a large peal, would require a clock weight of 15 cwt., with a clear fall of 40 feet ”

“ 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. ”

“ Abruptly the footsteps ceased. He waited for the next, and there was silence, and then suddenly, cutting through the unexpected stillness like a keen, thin blade, came the first stroke of the bell. At that the multitudinous faces swayed to and fro and a louder crying began all about him. The woman did not hear; she was burning something now in the candle flame. At the second stroke everything grew dim, and a breath of wind, icy cold, blew through the host of watchers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whereupon Monsieur went frantic. "Stop the clock—nevaire!—what crime to think of!—the clock must not stop till he stop himself!"
"All right, Monsoor, you can explain all that to Mr. Alan Craig. The clock, like everything else here, belongs to him now,—and I happen to have a headache this morning."
"Hah! you have rejoice at the return of the young Mr. Craik," said Guidet, controlling himself and sympathetically considering Caw's red eyes and husky voice. "Good!—but you look upon the wine when he was wheesky, and there is not so much jolly good fellow in the morning—eh, Mr. Caw?" ”

“ Complicated Watches are so called because besides the ordinary watch movement they possess other mechanism more or less complicated, by means of which they can indicate special portions of time,—as for instance the Chronograph, which marks on its dial the fifth of a second; the Quarter, and Half-Quarter, and Minute Repeaters, which furnish the time in the dark to within a minute, and are invaluable to invalids and blind persons; the Clock-Watch, which strikes the hours even in the pocket ”

“ Sometimes it would even happen that this precocious hour would sound two strokes more than the last; there must then have been an hour which I had not heard strike; something which had taken place had not taken place for me; the fascination of my book, a magic as potent as the deepest slumber, had stopped my enchanted ears and had obliterated the sound of that golden bell from the azure surface of the enveloping silence. ”

“ Hours are composed of minutes. If you do not set your watch accurately to the minutes, it will be wrong in the hour, although the error may be slight. Besides, in literature there is this additional motive for observing a vigilant precision, that it keeps us always on the right track for fresh suggestions and further discoveries.
It must be confessed, however, in spite of our respect for the antiquaries, that they have not rendered us much help towards the solution of the problem as to where Dryden was going on the night of the assault. Perhaps we have no right to inquire ”

“ Ian
The clocks! Bring them! [Seizes the spade over by the house; begins to dig a grave behind the sun-dial.] Bring every one! We will bury the clocks before the sun-dial—an offering, a living sacrifice. I tell you this is great, Eloise. What is a clock? Something agreed upon and arbitrarily imposed upon us. Standard time. Not true time. Symbolizing the whole standardization of our lives. Clocks! Why, it is clockiness that makes America mechanical and mean! Clock-minded! A clock is a little machine that shuts us out from the wonder of time. ”

“ The application of electricity for winding, driving, or regulating clocks is not fundamental, for the timekeeping is done by the master clock with its pendulum and wheels, just as by any grandfather's clock 200 years old. This broad survey of time measuring does not permit us to go into minute mechanical details. ”

“ For if we suppose the time marked to be an hour, the space passed over by the minute hand, that is, the circumference of the dial, has no relation with the hour except what the artificer gave it by so constructing the watch that the minute hand would make one revolution every hour. ”

“ Calendar work on watches is, of course, fatal to great accuracy of time-keeping, and is very complicated. A watch is made to record days of the week and month, and to take account of leap years usually by the aid of star-wheels with suitable pauls and stops. The type of this mechanism is to be found in the calendar motion of an ordinary grandfather's clock. ”

“ He disapproved of the proprietary interest she seemed to take in his friend, and yet had circumstances been a little different, how he would have welcomed it!
"A very good notion," observed Handyside. "The clock can't have too many guardians, and I don't imagine you would care to bring in strangers."
"Not to be thought of," replied Alan. "But I'm sorry for Caw. Teddy and I must leave him alone for a few days. We're catching the two o'clock steamer. Things to see about in Glasgow, and on to London in the morning. I'm hoping the big dog may turn up to-day." ”

“ The face of the clock. The hands, like black daggers, had pointed to ten minutes of one. Ten minutes of life! Ten minutes to live! Or—less?
Silence, broken only by the reluctant click-clack, click-clack of the rosewood clock. ”

“ The Several Branches of a Great Art.—The timekeeper—whether it be the scientific astronomical clock, or the chronometer used by mariners, or the modern watch, minute in size but recording time with accuracy, or the bracket or table clock, or the long-case clock—has proceeded on parallel lines of development. ”

“ It depends wholly on the measurement of time as the stars to be compared drift across the ring while the telescope is fixed, and while a clock or chronometer operating a sounder is a desirable adjunct one can do pretty well with a couple of stop watches since only differential times are required. ”

“ Inventing and whittling faster than ever, I made another hickory clock, shaped like a scythe to symbolize the scythe of Father Time. The pendulum is a bunch of arrows symbolizing the flight of time. It hangs on a leafless mossy oak snag showing the effect of time, and on the snath is written, "All flesh is grass." ”

“ To our poor, racked frames a coal-hod would not have suggested more discomfort. We dragged up our hampers, packed with steamer-rugs and pillows, and my sister sat on hers while I took another turn at the bell. While the maid is answering this bell I shall have plenty of time to tell you what we afterwards discovered the process of bell-ringing in an English hotel to be. ”

“ The actual proportion of a revolution during which current is supplied the motor is therefore rigorously determined by the clock pendulum, and the motor is selected so that its revolutions are exactly timed to this clock pendulum which has no work to do other than the circuit closing, and can hence be regulated to keep accurate time. ”

“ This was the clock which, with few intervals, measured out by hours the life of Daniel Dove from the seventeenth year of his age, when he first set up his rest within its sound.
Perhaps of all the works of man sun-dials and church-clocks are those which have conveyed most feeling to the human heart; the clock more than the sun-dial because it speaks to the ear as well as to the eye, and by night as well as by day. Our forefathers understood this, and therefore they not only gave a Tongue to Time, but provided that he should speak often to us and remind us that the hours are passing. ”

“ From being very untrustworthy, astronomical clocks are now made to great perfection by the application of the pendulum and by its compensation, while the invention of chronometers has placed a portable and equally trust worthy timekeeper in the hands of travellers. ”

“ Happily the clock has not received the attention of the modern sensation-monger. We are left with the heritage of the past undisturbed. He may gibe at the paint and canvas of old masters, he may deride the grace of the Greek in sculpture, but the simple mechanism of the clock symbolizing "the inaudible and noiseless foot of Time" mocks the charlatan of a little day, with oblivion tracking his scurrying heels.
The name of lantern clock may puzzle the modern collector, but its shape followed the lantern of the period, and, like the lantern, it was made to hang on the wall. ”

“ The sense of responsibility, of importance, which such a wonderful little piece of mechanism gives to them, the alacrity with which they thenceforth note the flight of time and compare the working of all other time-pieces, is remarkable. One of the first things usually done by the juvenile with his or her watch is, curiously enough, to challenge thereby the performance of the old-established time-pieces in the house,—even the infallible old Hall Clock, a very Nestor among clocks, does not escape scrutiny. ”

“ It is well that modern clocks have no wise saws and [Pg 32] mottoes telling of the unalterable hand of Time; "Old Time, the clock-setter, that bald sexton, Time," as Shakespeare says in King John.
Early Mechanism.—The problem for the old clockmakers who wished to supplant the primitive measurement of time by candle, by the hour-glass, and later by the sundial, was to produce a piece of mechanism which would in twenty-four hours, the prescribed period of day and night, indicate the flight of time hour by hour. ”

“ One lingers over their ornament with loving regard and forgets their purport. As timekeepers they fell short of the abbey clock, or of the sundial—a perennial stickler for truth when the sun shone. When the long pendulum, under the auspices of Christopher Huygens, commenced swinging, a timekeeper ready to hand eclipsed their gold and enamelled triumphs. But as fashionable baubles they had their continuous evolution, from Thomas Chamberlaine de Chelmisforde to Pinchbeck, and from Tompion to Eardley Norton. ”