Clocks · Quarter-striking clock
Posted weight-driven wall/bracket alarm clock with painted iron case
- Maker / attribution
- Unrecorded in source
- Date
- 1745–1755
- Historical period
- Precision & Scientific Horology (1750 – 1850)
- Country of origin
- Germany
- Place
- Germany (South)
- Object type
- Quarter-striking clock
- Materials / technique
- iron
- Dimensions
- Height: 30 centimetres Width: 19.50 centimetres
- Holding institution
- British Museum
- Accession / object no.
- 1967,0602.4
- Credit line
- British Museum, London
- Catalogue title (original)
- Posted weight-driven wall/bracket alarm clock with painted iron case (English)
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Record summary
Held and catalogued by British Museum (object number 1967,0602.4), this is a quarter-striking clock, made in Germany (South), dated 1745–1755. The Atlas places it in the Precision & Scientific Horology period (1750 – 1850) of its Clocks collection. Materials and techniques recorded by the source: iron. Recorded dimensions: Height: 30 centimetres Width: 19.50 centimetres. The record is illustrated with 6 photographs.
Assembled from the source record's structured fields. Dates and attributions are given as the source states them; where a field is missing the Atlas leaves it blank rather than estimating.
Catalogue description
Description — British Museum
Weight-driven posted frame movement with separate trains for going, hour striking and quarter striking. Verge escapement with original steel crown wheel. Later cow-tail pendulum mounted on the front. Count-wheels for hours and quarters, striking trains with nag's head release. Alarm train now missing. Originally with hoop and spikes for wall mounting and with a shaped iron base. Painted dial with hours I-XII, painted corner spandrels and painted dial centre. The side doors painted with a woman holding a vase of red flowers (right door); a man playing a bass viol (left door). Two bells above for hours and quarters. Train-counts: Going. Gt wheel 60 2nd wheel 60/10 Contrate wheel 48/6 Crown wheel 19/6 Striking. Gt wheel 60 Cam wheel 60/10 Pin wheel 60/6 Fly 6 Quarter striking. Gt wheel 60 2nd wheel 60/6 Pin wheel 60/6 Fly 6.
Provenance
Previous owner/ex-collection:, F H Knowles-Brown; Donated by:, Mrs Margaret Ann Clark, Donated by:, Rev J H Knowles-Brown, Donated by:, Mrs E M Richard
Historical context
Precision & Scientific Horology (1750 – 1850)
Harrison solves longitude; Mudge invents the lever; Breguet's Paris workshop defines the modern watch.
The age of the deadbeat escapement, compensated pendulums and observatory regulators. Domestic clocks spread through the middle classes: English longcase and bracket clocks, French gilt-bronze mantel clocks, Viennese Biedermeier wall clocks, Black Forest painted-shield clocks, and the first American shelf clocks.
Read the period in the timelineMore clocks from this periodEarlier: Early Modern Horology
Atlas type guide
Alarm clocks
Alarm work is among the oldest clock functions: monastic clocks woke monks for night prayers, and Renaissance table clocks often carried an alarm disc set by a pin. A separate spring or weight is released at the set time and drives a hammer against a bell. Some early alarms also lit a candle by striking a flint — the 'tinder pistol' alarm.
The cheap, mass-produced alarm clock arrived in the second half of the nineteenth century. American firms such as Seth Thomas and Westclox (the 'Big Ben' of 1910) and German makers such as Junghans and Kienzle made millions of drum-shaped alarms with pin-pallet escapements. Electric, quartz and digital alarm clocks followed in the twentieth century.
What to look for
- A separate alarm-setting dial or disc and an extra winding key.
- Twin bells on top (common after c. 1920) or a bell enclosed in the base.
- Pin-pallet escapements in inexpensive factory alarms.
- Trademarks and patent dates on dial or back.
Dating clues
- Renaissance alarm table clocks: sixteenth to seventeenth centuries.
- Drum alarm clocks: from the 1870s.
- Luminous dials with radium paint: c. 1910–1960.
General guidance written by the Atlas editors about this kind of object. It is not a statement about this particular piece; for that, rely on the source record above and on physical examination.
Read next:Anchor (recoil) escapement
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