The Special Hours
08.10.10
These clocks can be considered an unusual form , a clock with a special way to drive , with unusual speed control , watch the secret , etc. These watches are valued highly , because they are mostly the product of high quality self-employment , which differ from the usual commercial products . Their creators are trying to emphasize its inventiveness and originality and surprise this world .
One can not deny that often it is done in order to enhance the prestige of the company , this workshop . In the world of watchmaking has been created many well-known species of special hours . The most successful were repeated in a somewhat modified form countless times , many of them were later produced and en masse , while others were unique specimens and become part of private and museum collections , or have completely disappeared.
For less than the conventional design of mechanical watches are the so-called gravitational clock , features and essence of which is to use the weight mechanism for driving the same mechanism , so that they do not have weights or springs . The drive under its own weight can be achieved in many ways , but because there are many types of such gravity hours .
The first is relatively simple gravitational clock appeared in the middle of the XV century. in Burgundy (France ), of whom later , in the early XVII century . evolved known sawtooth clock . Burgundy gravitational clock shaped like a ball , which placed the entire clock mechanism . Springs replaced the drum with a small flat wound on a string , to which the mechanism was freely suspended . After the recent unwinding of coils with drum clock hand moved up slightly upward, to its original position. The spring is in the cavity of the drum re- wound string on its surface .
Original gravity clock built Lyons nobleman Nicolas Groll de Servier (1593 … 1686 ). The main part of the clock was a vertical spiral track consisting of two parallel wires on them moving down a steel ball , which is a special lifting mechanism then returned back to the top of the track. The impetus for the creation of such a watch was Galileo’s discovery that each body of spherical shape is the same way on an inclined plane for the same time. As for passing the ball through the bottom outlet of its trajectory have attached a simple counter , the old physical benefits become a chronometric instruments .
Groll was not , of course , the first to use the specified discovery of Galileo. During his service in the Austrian army , he had the opportunity to become acquainted with the work of the Royal watchmakers who worked in the Prague Castle Rudolf II. For example , here are ball and watch Christopher Margrave . Under the influence of Margrave built ball clock not only Groll , and at the end of XVI century . clocks are built and Hans Shlotthaym .
His ” Babel ” tower at 112 cm of gilded bronze with allegorical figures in the galleries belonged since 1603 to the most valuable and the most remarkable subjects of the Dresden Palace. Hours Shlotthayma had an unusual ball control and were technically very difficult (they were equipped with a built-in signaling mechanisms with flutes , equipped with clever cinematic elements, synchronizing the movement of allegorical figures with this mechanism ).
Alternatively, ball clock was a clock created in 1808 stamping . Like its predecessors , it enabled the steel ball to move along curved trajectories, established at this time in a flat walled brass plate installed in an inclined position. When the ball reaches the end of its trajectory, a special mechanism , coupled with a counter chronometric mechanism , altering the slope of the board so that the ball came back the same route in the opposite direction. The principle of stamping a liking to many , so it abroad and now is used in different ways. Depending on the embodiment of the time interval between two successive rotations of plates ranging from 12.5 to 30 seconds.
sometimes called secret watch the hours in which the clock mechanism somewhere deliberately hidden or concealed his connection to the indicator of time . Sometimes it is a special connection between the drain and the oscillator or the unusual shape of the drive. Similar attempts to compete with this idea is not new. For the ” secret “should be considered and ball clocks Margrave or devices made by his followers .
Incomprehensible principle of such hours have always attracted the attention of fans and a favorable effect on sales of hours of this kind . Therefore, many kinds of hours having it in the XIX and early XX century. when it was required to revive the interest in competitive markets to the products of the normal level .
In the pocket watch of this type established in the early 80 – ies , in a transparent glass dial placed two glass disk with fine teeth on the periphery . Each of the circles is at its center a single arrow. Tribe on the output shaft of the small clock mechanism, squeezed into the top of the bush under the crown, which transmits motion to the arrow.
Tags: chronometric instruments, commercial products, gravitational clock, mechanical watches, Special Hours, the clock mechanism