Wooden
Clocks - expression in wood
The wooden clocks add beauty and elegance to the room.
They blend and complement with other artifacts and furniture
of the room. Wooden clocks come in varying designs and
styles. Looking into the history of timekeeping in 1656
Dutch astronomer Christian Huygens devised a successful
pendulum clock. He used short pendulum that beat several
times a second and the whole works was encased in wood.
Though this was an improvement on earlier mechanical
clocks, it did have minute error of less than one minute
a day. In 1670 an English clockmaker William Clement
made use of a pendulum about a yard long that took a
full second to move back and forth. He encased the pendulum
in a wooden case to diminish the effects of air currents.
This gave rise to Longcase clocks and pendulum. Again
in the year 1721 George Graham improved the pendulum's
accuracy by compensating for changes in the pendulum's
length caused by temperature variations.
Railway house clock:
The basic form of the clock is rectangle or square piece
on which an isosceles triangle is placed. The house-faced
basic form with wooden decorative elements was developed
to include scenes from daily life. The face of this wooden
with white numbers and hands and fir cone shaped weights.
Dancing couples in traditional clothes move to music
or the mill wheel rotates on the hour, while a farmer
chops wood. The cuckoo itself moves its wings and beak
and rocks back and forth when calling. This is the oldest
cuckoo clock from the black forest.
Puzzle Clock - A wooden beauty:
Puzzle Clock is made of Russian
five-ply of Baltic Birch. The wood is laser cut. The
pendulum of Puzzle Clock dates back to 300 years. The
clock operates using the method" verge
and foliot". The top horizontal bar moves left and
then right, is suspended by a thin cord. The pallet engages
the escape wheel while the bar turns back and forth and
the escape gear is turned in one-second intervals. The
earlier versions had only an hour hand and were not very
accurate. Later on the a Canadian clock maker named Joe
Monincx made it extremely accurate by adding two escape
wheels.
Digital wooden clocks:
The latest wooden digital clock appears to be a block
of wood. This wooden clock has numerals that mysteriously
appear on its surface, as if they were being projected.
It works with a thin layer of wood over the numerals,
so they can shine through. Until those numbers appear,
it looks exactly like a Scandinavian-designed, well-sanded
10-inch-long block of teakwood. There are no buttons
to be seen, no controls in sight-the time and alarm-set
buttons are all hidden around back.
The antique clocks had wooden cases that were intricately
carved and designed according to the style of the concerned
period. Today manufacturers are trying their best to
replicate the designs. Though they have succeeded, it
can never equal the handcrafted cases of the early centuries.
There are many
more fixture articles in our fixture
section. There
is more specific information in the links at the beginning
of this article. They can guide you where you need
to go.
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