CURIOUS CLOCKS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 670, 24 October 1933, Page 2

CURIOUS CLOCKS

THROUGH THE AGES RUNNING WATER USED TO MEASURE TIME. LATEST NOYEL MODELS. • A bronze liion, twelve feet Mgh, wHich will roar at noon, and a rooster, six feet high, which will croyr at sunrise and suriset, are features of a huge new clock erected in Mcssina, . Sicily, says the New York Times, Another addition to the world's wonder docks is one constructed by a oonvicb who reoently finished- a term in a Continental pentitentiary. Every part of his strage timepieee, down to the tiniest wheel, is made of wood. The clock contains thjrty different watches, each showing the correct ,tim;e in ohe of the principal cities of the world. Another feature is a calendap which shows the'passings. of ; the days, weeks, and month's. Not long ago an. unusual clock was made by a Swiss engineer. Ineluded in its meohanism is a barometer, the apparatus heing so arraniged that variations in atmospheric pressure furnish the "power" ineeessary to keep the clock godng. : A clock installed at the parish church of Tarley in the English county of Gloucestershire, as a memorial to iaoi officer who fell in the war, was made hy John Carter, a wheel wright, from pieces of old iron, among them a spdde, a pistol harrel, a windlass, and various farming implemients. The winding .bandle was made from a scythe. The clock keeps exccllent time. A remarkable piece of workman®hip is Bohemia's glass clock. It took several years of lahour on the part of Joseph Thayer, a glassworker . of that country, to make this clock entirely of glass, even to th'e tiniest screw. Some ancient docks were made to play trieks. One such is at Stettin, Germany. Ini the centre of its ddal is the large and hideous f ace of a bearded man, who every second rolls his eyes from side to' side. In his mouth he holds a meta.1 plate telling the day of the month. The clock bears the date 1736. Another clock, made in Switzerland se.veral centurles ago, was conistructed to put out a tongue at people who stopped to see what time iF. W95.

An eight-day clock- smaller than & dime and more than 100 years old is one .of the treasuras of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers iii London. Incidentally, Kinig George owns nearly 1000 docks, one of the largest collections of timepieces. More than 250 of the King's docks are distrdbuted throughout Windsor Castle; Buckinghaan' Palace has ahout 160. Brequet's "sympath'etic clock," for whdch George IV paid a largie sum, is in Bucklinigham Palace. The dial is George IV's gold watch, with chain and keys attached; at the stroke of 12 a steele needle runs up and automatieally adjusts the minute hand. At Windsor there is a wonderfu! old clock that has been goinig for more .than a century. Idke Big Ban, th'e Parliament clock; it caries only a fraction of .a second a day. It is in the turret over the State entrance to the .grand quadrangle. . When the wind is favourahle its chimes can be heard thr.ee miles away. It is a mere dnfant, however, compared with .the oldest turret clock in England, which is presumiably the one in th'e great tower of Salisbury C'athedral. Records show that the mechanism existed in 1386; at continued to work until 1884. In bygone days running water was largely used. to measure time, and water docks can be found all over the ancient world. Some were very simple. others were of astonishing delicacy and complexity. Wlater docks had the disadvantage that, as the pressure of fluid decreased, the rate of flow decreased also. In Greeoe and Rorne, where the hour was a variahle unit, being one-twelfth part of the period of daylight or night, as the case might be, .they had also to be frequently adjusted. The attem.pt to allow for these two •anomalies led the great clockmakers of Alexandria to device miracles of ingenuity, among them a famous clock set up by Ctesibius in the Tem- ' ple of Arsinoe. Every twenty-four hours a little winged boy with a pointer in his hand ascended a column, pointing to the hours marked on it. At the end of the day he fell to the hottom and began again. The motive power was supplied by the bears of another winged boy, who wep.t eontinually into a bronze bowl. This was only one of many fluid docks, there was even a rnilk clock in an Egyptian temple. The measurement of time by the burning of candles, which for long was popular in monasteries, is an application of an essentially similar idea.