Page:EB1911 - Volume 06.djvu/569

 mechanically transmitted through its surfaces at each operation, and secondly, owing to the arrangement of the fulcrums at G and K which secure a rubbing contact. The duration of the contact is just that necessary to accomplish the work which has to be done, and it is remarkable that when used to operate large circuits of electrically propelled dials the duration accommodates itself to their exact requirements and the varying conditions of battery and self-induction. The ratchet wheel F is usually mounted loosely upon its arbor and is connected to the wheel C by means of a spiral spring, which in conjunction with the back-stop click P maintains the turning force on the wheelwork at the instant when the lever D is being raised.

Electrically driven dials usually consist of a ratchet wheel driven by an electrically moved pall. 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. Impulses sent through the electromagnet will then drive the clock. If the clock is wound up in the ordinary way the motion will be so much helped that the electric current has very little to do, and thus may be very feeble. Fig. 33 shows the dial-driving device of Hope Jones’s clock. Each time that a current is sent by the master-clock, the electromagnet B attracts the pivoted armature C, and when the current ceases the lever D with the projecting arm E is driven back to its old position by the spring F, thus driving the wheel A forward one division. G is a back-stop click, and H, I, fixed stops.

It seems doubtful whether in large towns a number of dials could be electrically driven from a distance because of the large amount of power that would have to be transmitted. But for large buildings, such as hotels, they are excellent. One master-clock in the cellar will drive a hundred or so placed over the building. The master-clock may itself be driven by electricity, but it will require the services from time to time of some one to correct the time. Even this labour may be avoided if the master-clock is synchronized, and as synchronization requires but a small expenditure of force, it can be done over large areas. Hence the future of the clock seems to be a series of master-clocks, electrically driven, and synchronized one with another, in various parts of a city, from each of which a number of dials in the vicinity are driven. Electrical synchronization was worked out by Louis Bréguet and others, and a successful system was perfected in England by J. A. Lund. The leading principle of the best systems is at each hour to cause a pair of fingers or some equivalent device to close upon the minute hand and put it exactly to the hour. Other systems are designed to retard or to accelerate the pendulum, but the former appears the more practical method. There is probably a future before synchronization which will enable the services of a clockmaker to be largely dispensed with and relegate his work merely to keeping the instruments in repair.

Miscellaneous Clocks.—Some small clocks are made to go for a year. They have a heavy balance wheel of brass weighing about 2 ℔ and about 2 in. in diameter, suspended from a point above its centre by a fine watch spring about 4 in. long. The crutch engages with the upper part of the spring, and as the balance wheel swings the pallets are actuated. The whole clock is but a large watch with a suspended balance wheel, oscillating once in about 8 seconds. Unless the suspension spring be compensated for temperature, such clocks gain very much in winter.

An ingenious method of driving a clock by water has been proposed. As the pendulum oscillates to one side, an arm on it rises and at last lightly touches a drop of water hanging from a very fine nozzle; this drop is taken off and carried away by the arm, to be subsequently removed by adhesion to an escape funnel placed below the arm. Hence at each double vibration of the pendulum part of the work done by a drop of water falling through a short distance is communicated to the pendulum, which is thus kept in motion as long as the water lasts. At this rate a gallon of water ought to drive the clock for 40 hours. Care of course must be taken to keep the water in the reservoir at a constant level, so that the drops formed shall be uniform.

If it were worth while, no doubt the oscillations of a pendulum working in a vacuum could be maintained by the communication and discharge at each oscillation of a slight charge of electricity; or again, heat might at each oscillation be communicated to a thermo-electric junction, and the resulting current used to drive the pendulum.

The expansions and contractions of metal rods under the influence of the changes of temperature which take place in the course of each night and day have also been employed to keep a clock wound up, and if there were any need for it no doubt a small windmill rotating at the top of a tower would easily keep a turret clock fully wound, by a simple arrangement which would gear the going barrel of the clock to the wind vane motion, whenever the weight had fallen too low, and release it when the winding up was completed. Even a smoke jack would do the same office for a kitchen clock.

The methods of driving astronomical telescopes by means of clockwork will be found in the article. Measurements of small intervals of time are performed by means of chronographs which in principle depend on the use of isochronous vibrating tuning-forks in place of pendulums. In practice it is needful in most cases that an observer should intervene in time measurements, although perhaps by means of a revolving photographic film a transit of the sun might be timed with extraordinary accuracy. But if the transit of a star across a wire is to be observed, there is no mode at present in use of doing so except by the use of the human eye, brain and hand. Hence in all such observations there is an element of personal error. Unfortunately we cannot apply a microscope to time as we can to space and make the cycle of events that takes place in a second last say for five minutes so as to time them truly. By personal observations the divisions of a second cannot in general be made more accurately than to or  of a second. The most rapid music player does not strike a note more than 10 or 12 times in a second. It is only in case of recurring phenomena that we can make personal observations more accurate than this by taking the mean of a large number of observations, and allowing for personal error. For the purpose of determining longitude at sea accuracy to of a second of time would find the place to about 20 yards. It seems to follow that the extent to which astronomical clocks can be made accurate, viz. to of a second average variation from their mean daily rate, or one two-and-a-half millionth of 24 hours, is a degree of accuracy sufficient for present purposes, and it seems rather doubtful whether mechanical science will in the case of clocks be likely to reach a much higher figure.

In the 17th century it was a favourite device to make a clock show sidereal time as well as mean solar time. The length of the sidereal day is to the mean solar day as ·99727 to 1, and various attempts have been made by trains of wheels to obtain this relation—but all are somewhat complicated.

Magical clocks are of several kinds. One that was in vogue about 1880 had a bronze figure on the top with outstretched arm holding in its hand the upper part of the spring of a pendulum,