Curious Clocks and Watches through time with Oliver Cooke | Curator's Corner S8 E1

Hello, I'm Oliver Cook, curator of horology here at the British Museum. Welcome to my corner. Today we are back in the horological study room, because it's full of clocks and watches and other things. And today, we're going to look at a few of the more curious ones. So let us get the ball rolling with this clock. We're going to see a rolling clock, an inclined plane clock. It was made in the late 17th century in France. The clock isn't signed, we don't know who it was made by exactly. It's a beautiful thing. It's got some lovely engraving on the sides and back here. And it's definitely a curiosity. It'd have to be on a very stable shelf, because this would normally take a day to roll from here to here. So inside here is a big counterweight that's balancing against the rest of the weight of the clock. And that counterweight is fixed to the central arbor of the clock on which the hour hand is sitting. And that hour hand is always going to stay in the same position. And what will happen is, if the clock were working properly, as the clock rolls down, you'll see the hours progressing and the hours will pass the hour hand like a wandering hour dial and tell you the time. What's happening is, the whole clock is trying to roll down under its own weight. So the very act of lifting up the clock and plonking it here is winding the clock. And we have to find its position where it just wants to... where it's just stable and just wants to stop. It's very precarious. And then the clock will start running. And it will give up its energy over the course of the day as it rolls down. You can't hear it ticking now, because the clock's not in a working condition. But inside there is a balance and balance spring controller which governs the timekeeping, the speed at which it rolls down a ramp. But the weight of the clock itself is causing it to want to roll down this ramp and will drive what is actually otherwise a pretty standard clock mechanism. Getting it out for filming, I've not really looked properly at this clock before. I thought, oh, I wonder how fast it rolls. So I measured the diameter and I realised it's got to roll once in 12 hours because it's got a 12-hour dial. So I did the calculations and it basically needs... I think it's 97 centimetres or so to roll during a day. And I thought, well, this ramp is not 97 centimetres long. So I looked a bit harder at our object database and realised we had another bit. Somebody, at some point, before it came to the museum, I hasten to add, thought it would be a good idea to saw this ramp in half. Why would you do such a thing? I first thought, did they want the ramp a bit steeper because the clock wasn't going? But I don't think that's it. As you've seen, it makes it very difficult to even set up the clock. So I think it's quite possibly just to fit it on a small shelf, which, you know, we'd never do something like that here. But there you go. The clock will actually run on the ramp that we have for about 27 hours. So you get a bit of a grace. You might do it at six o'clock every night. You've got a few hours to, you know, miss if you're late home from work or whatever it is. So that's an interesting implementation of energy powering a clock. And you may have seen one of my previous videos on how a clock works. That is the very first element of how a clock works that we talk about energy. So let's move on to our next one. We're going to look at the escapement controller. OK, so here we are still in France, but a couple of hundred years later, now at the end of the 19th century. Something else altogether. Let me give it a little wind just to get it working. We don't like to put a full wind on clocks that haven't been run for a while. We'd like to make sure they're clean and oiled. But we can just give it a few clicks and see if it's going to perform for us. There we go. And this is what we call a flying pendulum clock. It was painted here in America in 1883. But as I say, this is French a little bit later. And here I think you can see what it's doing. But I'll take its little parasol off so we can have a better look. I think, as you can see, it relies on its winding and unwinding for its timekeeping. Its function of the length of the little pearl bead on the silk thread there will determine how quickly it spins. It spins very quickly and it unwinds and winds. But I think you can also see it's very uneven in how it does that. It's every time it's different. And basically that makes this an atrocious timekeeper. It wasn't built as a quality clock. It wasn't ever intended to run for years and years. It's meant to be wound up occasionally and show off for a bit of fun. So there we have it. An interesting take on the Eskimo controller. So let me stop this. It's easier said than done because it just wants to keep going. Told you so. Now behave. Do you talk to your clocks often? I do, I do. Clocks need a good talking to sometimes and then it works, you see. There you go. So this clock has a very interesting take on indication. Just looks like a normal clock, don't you say? But if I turn it around you get more of a clue that something's going on. And if I tell you this clock was made by the EverReady company, who we all know for making torches or flashlights, as some people like to call them, and batteries. This clock does that. How and why, you ask? Well, allow me to demonstrate. If I point it towards you and I apply some electricity to it, normally there would be a battery in the box down below and the electricity would flow up these two arms here and through the clock. But I'm going to apply a bit of power myself. We can't get the right sort of battery anymore, but we can get the right sort of voltage. And there, hopefully you can see some sort of light flickering and if you're lucky you might even see a clock dial image through there. There we go. I'll let that go because I'll not be able to keep it going for long. And what happens is, if you point this lens at a wall, it'll project the time, project the dial of a clock. And if this was working as it should with a battery in it, you'd cause that to happen by pressing this lovely little button here. So how might this clock have been used? Well, imagine yourself, if you will, lining bed. You're in the year 1913. You may or may not have an electricity, electrical light in your house by this stage, so you can't just flick on a light to see the time on your clock. And even if you did, your other half might be angry for you waking them up. So you can just pick up the button quietly and discreetly or flesh the time up on the wall. And this is all well and good for many people. It's a great idea. But if you're like me, you have to wear glasses. I'm short-sighted, so I wouldn't be able to see the time on the wall as many people I'm sure wouldn't. And for those of us with this issue, we have something else that we can use. So now we can move down in scale. We have a very interesting and lovely wristwatch made in about 2014 by the E.ON Timepiece Company, based in Washington, USA. The watch itself was made in a factory in China. And it enables us to read the time by touch. We have the minutes in the centre, and on the edge, we have the hours, indicated by movable bearings against very tactile hour numerals. It's a fascinating thing. This was designed by the E.ON Company in conjunction with Bradley Schneider, who was a naval officer who was blinded in the Afghanistan war, and he went on to become a very successful Paralympian in swimming. And they worked together to develop a watch that could be used by visually impaired people. It's a great design. So here I am in the process of setting the watch, much like you would a standard wristwatch. We turn in the crown, and the minutes turn, and the hours you'll see at the bottom turning. Whereas on a normal watch, you'd see a minute hand and an hour hand. Well, that's exactly what this has got going on inside, except at the ends of the hands, the little magnets. And they reach out with their little magnetic fields and keep the ball bearings in place. And if we're out and about, you know, we'll be wearing this, we might knock the ball bearings, and they'll be floating about. But all we need to do is just rotate the watch. They snap back into position. It's a very robust design, and you can use it by touch, just as well as looking. It's a beautiful looking thing. This is a neat and wonderful watch, but the idea of reading time by touch is not a new one. And we see it reappear, recur, through the development of watches. And we can even go right back to the beginning. And we're almost there with this example. We're in Germany in the mid-16th century. And if I open up this beautifully decorated lid, see the watch dial, you will see that each hour is a touch pin. And we can feel the position of the hour hand against the touch pin, in exactly the same way as we did a wristwatch. And what I also want to show you is a clock of the period. Also almost certainly from Germany, the same mid-16th century thereabouts. You might describe this as a horizontal table clock, a drum clock. And you can see it's very similar indeed to our watch. We have touch pins around the periphery. In both cases, we have a single hand, an hour hand. We don't need a minute hand at this time, because clocks and watches simply aren't accurate enough to need them. And well, really, the only difference here between a watch and a clock, yes, there's the size, the watch has a lid, and it also has a pendant, so you can wear it on a chain around your neck. So that is reading the time by touch, indicating the time by touch. So let's just look at a couple more objects, just because we can. And I'm going to bring in the rest of this clock now. And this bit here is a separate mechanism with a bell on top. And what this is, is an alarm attachment. And this clips into the top of a clock. I won't try and do it properly, properly right now, because I'll have to get in close and it's a bit fiddly. But it sits like that. Beautiful, beautiful item. And what you may see hanging underneath is this lever. And as the hour hand passes the lever, it releases this mechanism, which you'll have previously wound, and it will set the alarm. You simply position this to when you want it to go off. So that is a very early alarm system. And they're not uncommon for this period, relatively speaking. We have a few of these in the collection, and they're lovely little things. So I think now we'll look at another alarm clock, or alarm system. If we cast ourselves a word in a couple of hundred years, you may have been lucky enough to have a lovely pear-cased watch. Not, you know, not an insignificant purchase. It'd be a reasonable investment, cost a fair bit of money. Lovely little thing. This one's actually dated. It's in the 1770s by an R. Thompson, so a watch made in London. But imagine you fancy an alarm clock. You need that bit of extra help getting up in the morning. Buying another clock or watch, you can buy alarm watches as well. You know, it's not a trifle. These things are expensive. So what you might be tempted by instead is something like this. You might be reading the back pages of the ye olde Sunday Times, and see an advert, all sorts of weird and wonderful things, including this. We can take it out of its case, and flip open the front of the watch, and pop it in this little tray here. And what is this, you ask? Well, we can wind this piece round and around, and you'll see the weight coming up. And it is one turn per hour. We want the alarm to go off in, say, six hours' time. We'll do six turns. Then we'll set this on the setting square of the watch. There's a little square there. You'd normally put a key on to set the hands. You wouldn't ever attempt to set a watch like this by moving its hands. They'll snap off straight away. So now, as the watch runs through the night, the minute hand will go round once an hour, and we'll slowly let the weight down. But what you will have also done in the morning is set up this contraption here, which calls to mind setting up a mousetrap. So as the watch turns through the night, the minute hand proceeds as the watch runs. This will now unwind down and down one turn per hour, remember. And eventually, at some point, when you want to wake up, the weight will hit the lever and release the bell. Isn't that fantastic? That's going to wake anyone up, I think. But I don't think we can really rely on that to set off at a precise time or even at all. I think sometimes we might imagine the weight might miss altogether. So I see this in the same camp as the flying pendulum clock we looked at earlier. It's more of a novelty than a truly functional device, but another lovely item in the collection. So there we have it. Some very curious items indeed from the cupboards of the Horological Students' Room. I hope you found this interesting. Thank you for watching. There's more of these on YouTube, if you want. I've done one on how a clock works, as I mentioned. There's one on the night clock, which is a very curious clock itself. There's also one of me taking a clock apart and putting it back together again. Does it tick at the end of it? You'll have to watch to find out. And of course, if you come to the British Museum, please go up to Galleries 38 and 39, the Sir Harry and Lady Ginogli Galleries of Clocks and Watches, where we tell the whole story of horology. And we also have many more curiosities up there. There's a big clock in the form of an ancient galleon that would have sailed the courtly banqueting tables of the 16th century. We have the night clock. You can see the night clock there. We have the rolling ball clock. The ball zigzags down the ramp, ramp tilts and goes back. It's fascinating. Please do come.