Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/672

650 a more wonderful piece of mechanism than the clock that we have just described. It is very much smaller than the Hazleton clock, and readily stands in the corner of an editor's office in Philadelphia. This editor—who controls one of the leading papers in that city—has more than fifty clocks, many of them very rare and costly, but the Rittenhouse is superior to all the rest. It was made in 1767 by David Rittenhouse, after whom Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia is named. The clock has six dials. On the main dial in the center there are four hands, which point out the seconds, minutes, hours, and days—the latter giving one day more to February in leap-year. The phases of the moon are also given. The second dial shows the movements of the planets about the sun—each planet being represented by a golden ball. The third dial shows the moon revolving about the earth. The fourth dial shows how Saturn is getting along in his twenty-nine-year journey around the sun. The fifth dial shows whether the sun-time is fast or slow in comparison with mean meridian-time. The sixth dial discloses a combination of chimes which sound the quarter-hours, a choice of the tune to be played being had by turning a hand to any one of ten numbers, and a repetition of the tune is caused by pressing on a knob upon the dial.

A great many people nowadays appear to have taken a fancy to the tall clocks that are intended to stand in the corner of a room. They are sometimes called "grandfather's clocks"; and a great variety of them may be found all through the New England States, but more especially in Salem, Massachusetts, and Newport, Rhode Island. A number of English clocks from Virginia have recently come into the possession of the dwellers in Newport in a roundabout way. It seems that during the war of 1861 the negroes frequently stole the tall clocks and took them to their cabins. But, as the ceilings of the cabins were so very low, the clock-cases had to be sawed off, both at the top and at the bottom. Several years afterward a live Yankee came along and bought a great many of the shortened clocks, took them home, repaired them, and sold them at very high prices. Of course, all of these clocks give the old, new, and full moon, the tides, etc., and occasionally one of them has a music-box. A good story is told of a lady who drove a long distance into New Jersey to buy an old clock that would play tunes. Having brought it home, she found that it needed repairing badly; and so she took it to a repairer of clocks. Now, this repairer did not know how important it was, in the mind of the lady, to have the clock play very old times. Therefore, when he saw that the musical-box part of the clock must be replaced with something else, he put in a cylinder that contained several modern tunes. When the clock had been repaired it was sent home. The lady called in her friends to congratulate her upon her purchase. All of the visitors waited eagerly for the old tunes to be played; but, instead of that kind of music, the machinery struck up "The Babies on our Block"!