Grandfather clock

“ Graham, however, concentrated most of his skill on watches while Tompion put the major part of his talent into long-case clocks which were unrivaled. For, by this time, with the gradual development and improvement of clock machinery, it was possible to make grandfather, or long-case, clocks that kept excellent time. The defects of the old wheel escapement of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries were, as I told you, remedied in part by the invention of the fusee, a device for equalizing the movement. ”

“ A very pretty and uncommon object to copy is that of an old-fashioned clock, a veritable "my grandfather's clock," an upright tall eight-day clock that has a long chain and a heavy pendulum concealed within its tall case, and that shows a big square face with large figures printed on it. I will give you a few details about my cork clock, and I think you will make one and set it upon a bracket to be admired by all beholders. This miniature clock stands 71⁄2 inches high. ”

“ O, people do not always use things until they are worn out; did I not hear you tell aunt Mary that our centre-table looked so shabby and old-fashioned that although it was strong and not broken at all you intended to send it to the attic and have a new one? Now I suppose that either aunt Mary or aunt Charlotte thought the same thing about the old clock, and when some 'Yankee peddler' came along with a new-fashioned Connecticut clock, they coaxed grandfather to buy one and sent this old one to this dark corner. ”

“ The Grandfather's Clock (Fig. 134) makes an effective piece of furniture for the hall or living-room, and is easily made. Figure 124 shows the pattern for the front of this clock. The back is made the same, with the omission of the square opening cut in the front frame for the clock-face. Cut a block of wood two by two by three-quarters [Pg 118] inches to fit between the frames at the top. After nailing the pieces together, procure a face from a toy watch, and fasten it in the opening made for it in the front frame. ”

“ One weak place in the clock is the escapement wheel. The points soon wear down, thereby producing a greater escapement and pendulum movement, resulting in an increased strain and wear of the clock. If the tips of the teeth on the wheel are bent up slightly with a pair of pliers, the swing of the pendulum will be reduced, thereby increasing the life of the clock. Many of the grandfather's clocks can be put in order in this manner so as to serve as a timepiece as well as a cherished ornament.—Contributed by C. F. Spaulding. ”

“ And if we save or lose an hour or two what's the odds? We've got all the time there is anyway."
Geordie Ryton, the village cobbler, bought two clocks, one a grandfather's. He put it in a corner and placed a small nickel clock on the mantel-shelf. The grandfather's clock has not been altered to the Daylight Saving Bill's requirements. "Hoo is't, Geordie," asked a customer, "ye've altered the smaal clock and not the gran'faither's clock?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ Care has to be taken that the pushes of the pall do not cause the ratchet wheel to be impelled too far. The anchor escapement of a common grandfather’s clock can be made to drive the works by means of an electromagnet, the pendulum being removed. With a common anchor escapement the scape-wheel can be driven round by wagging the anchor to and fro. All then that is necessary is to fix a piece of iron on the anchor so that its weight pulls the anchor over one way, while an electromagnet pulls the iron the other. ”

“ The latter are made with such accuracy as to correct the time of other clocks, such as turret and church clocks, which are more exposed to the influence of the weather, and are necessarily made upon a coarser scale. In large mansions there is no handsomer or more necessary appointment for the hall or vestibule than a fine eight-day clock, 'to welcome the coming, speed the parting guest,' and to give the time of day to the entire household. ”

“ In 1842, I determined to make the venture of sending a consignment of brass clocks to Old England. I made a bargain with Epaphroditus Peck, a very talented young man of Bristol, a son of Hon. Tracy Peck, to take them out, and sent my son—Chauncey Jerome, Jr. with him. All of the first cargo consisted of the O.G. one day brass clocks. As soon as it was known by the neighboring clock-makers, they laughed at me, and ridiculed the idea of sending clocks to England where labor was so cheap. ”

“ As timekeepers they never can bear comparison with the later type with the long pendulum. They stand as examples of early clockmaking, with fine brass dials, with artistic appearance, simple and unpretentious, but lacking the real scientific application of further developed principles of a succeeding period.
A clock that could only be used as a bracket clock or a wall clock with weights beneath hardly filled the requirements of an age when domestic furniture demanded luxury and exquisite taste. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Probably John Bailey, who was no doubt one of the clockmaking Baileys of Yorkshire, was a pioneer of a little later period. We can only list these men as we stumble upon their handiwork. Unfortunately, there are early clocks whose makers it is impossible to trace. A good many such timepieces were made for the interiors of churches or for their steeples. The church at Ipswich, Massachusetts, built in 1699, which at first had only a bell to mark the hours, arrived five years later at the dignity of a clock having both face and hands. ”

“ The collecting of clocks is a fad which few people indulge in. Yet there are those who own ten or a dozen timepieces, and who like to have them in running order. The old Dutch clocks, while looking very well, are notoriously ill-regulated time-keepers. A collector took a prize lately acquired to an old German clock-repairer who seemed more learned in the ways of ancient clocks than many a more pretentious maker. ”

“ Portable ones appeared about the beginning of the fourteenth century, though the inventor is not known, nor the exact time or place of invention. When portable clocks were invented, the motive power must have been changed from weights to main-springs, and this change in motive force marks an era in the development of the clock. The introduction of the pendulum as a regulating agent was, however, the greatest event in clock development. ”

“ The “dead beat” escapement is shown in Fig. 29, and is used in clocks of a high grade, generally with a seconds pendulum. It has no recoil as you can easily see that the surfaces O O on which the teeth fall, are portions of a circle around the center P. The beveled ends of these pallets are called the impulse surfaces, and a tooth is just giving the little push on the right-hand pallet. It is found in good railroad clocks, watch-makers' regulators and in many astronomical clocks. These terms are merely comparative, a “regulator” being a good clock and an “astronomical,” an extra good one. ”

“ Simon Willard patented in 1802 an improved time-piece, which Mr. Howard says is the clock now known as the “banjo” clock. Illustration 355 shows a clock bought by the writer in a country town from an old man who called it a time-piece, which is the name given it in the country, “banjo” being suggested to the modern mind by the shape of the upper part. The sides of the clock are of mahogany. The glass door to the face is convex and is framed in brass, and the ornaments at the sides of the clock are also of brass. ”

“ Such creatures do not deserve to have clocks. They should have lived when there weren't any."
"Back in the thirteenth century, you mean?" queried Christopher, not unwilling to display his knowledge.
"Oh, they were just beginning to get them by that time," McPhearson objected instantly. "By the fourteenth century there were clocks that really began to be clocks. In 1326, for example, the [72] Abbott of St. Albans made a marvelous clock which not only showed the course of the sun and moon but the ebb and flow of the tide. In the meantime more big clocks began to be put up on the church towers. ”

“ It was not till 1837 that it occurred to any of these ingenious makers of timepieces to produce a one-day clock out of brass. To Chauncey Jerome, the first exporter of clocks from America to England in the year 1824, the honor was reserved of applying the principle of the cheap wire pinion to the brass, one-day clock. Thus began the revolution of American clock manufacturing, which has placed this country before all the world as a leader in cheap and accurate watch and clock making. ”

“ There is no one who can claim any credit of introducing American clocks into that country excepting myself. After I had opened a store in New York, we did, in a measure, stop these men from using my labels.
I have said that when I got up this one day brass clock in 1838, that the fourth chapter in the Yankee clock business had commenced. Perhaps Seth Thomas hated as bad as any one did to change his whole business of clock making for the second time, and adopt the same thing that I had introduced. ”

“ Berthoud has given a drawing and description of a portable clock, probably by Jourdain, without a fusee, and some of the modern continental watch-makers have, perhaps, derived their idea from it of making a watch keep time without a fusee. Up to the close of the 15th century the motive power in clocks was always obtained by means of weights; the invention of the coiled spring rendered them portable. ”

“ It demanded craftsmanship of the highest character to create these masterpieces of horology, and the art has been continued in a separate stream to that of clockmaking up to the present day. The watch is not the small clock, nor is the clock the large watch. Whatever may have been their common origin, each has developed on lines essentially proper for the technique. As the clock has developed in mechanical perfection, so the watch has similarly kept in parallel progress towards the same ideal, that of the perfect timekeeper. ”

“ The domestic clock—Its use as a bracket or wall clock—Seventeenth-century types—Continuance of manufacture in provinces—Their appeal to the collector.
The form of the lantern clock is one that appeals to the artist. We love the candelabrum with candles, with its finely, fashioned brass forms, Dutch and English. It adds a grace to the interiors of the old masters of the Low Countries. Nobody is especially interested in the gas bracket or the paraffin lamp. ”

“ It is interesting to find the clockmaker so conservative. Once the cherub found its way on to clocks, there it remained. It is in the clock at Windsor Castle which Henry VIII gave to Anne Boleyn, formerly at Strawberry Hill before Queen Victoria purchased it. In its first form on the spandrel it practically followed the simple woodcarver's design we illustrate, but with this difference: the triangle to be filled by the clockmaker in his spandrels, at each of the four corners of his dial, was exactly opposite to that of the woodcarver or the stone-carver where he made a bracket. ”

“ Noah Pomeroy of Bristol, is also engaged in making pendulum movements for other parties. I should, however, mention Ireneus Atkins, of Bristol, who is making a first-rate thirty-day brass clock, and I am told there is no better one for time in the country. The movement for this kind of clock was invented by Joseph Ives, who has spent most of his time for the last twenty-five years in improving on springs and escapements for clocks, and who has done a great deal for the advancement of this business. Mr. Atkins, who is making this thirty-day time-piece, is an excellent man to deal with. ”

“ To the parish it is a source of some expense.
This Clock was restored and re-coloured at the general restoration of the Church in 1865–6, when the figure of Old Time, holding a scythe in his hand (as many of us will remember) , was removed. The Clock face and Clock hands do not look to the passer-by to be very large; but I find, on measurement, that the diameter of the Clock face is 10 ft., that the Roman letter numbers on it measure 11⁄2 ft., that the length of the large hand is 6 ft. 51⁄2 in., with a weight of 21 lbs., and that of the small hand 3 ft. 4 in., with a weight of 8 lbs. ”