Microstran
Self Winding Clock Co.
This is my only Self Winding Clock Co. piece, purchased many years ago in an antiques mall for $20. It's a rich, burled walunut case clock with Art Deco features and originally it encorporated a mechanical movement that was electrically rewound by a dry cell battery mechanism. The Western Union company developed a scheme that allowed it to pulse the the time to these clocks across the country at the start of each hour, thereby synchronizing them. The dry cell batteries powered a small electric motor that re-wound the clock's mechanical movement every hour. Since Western union already had telegraph lines this was a rather novel but practical way for a company to have precisely synchronized times at either end of the country. At the beginning of the hour all telegraph traffic was suspended while a brief signal was sent to all the clocks on the "network" and a solenoid in each clock would pull the hands to the correct hour position!
- Zoom
- Self Winding
This is my only Self Winding Clock Co. piece, purchased many years ago in an antiques mall for $20. It's a rich, burled walunut case clock with Art Deco features and originally it encorporated a mechanical movement that was electrically rewound by a dry cell battery mechanism. The Western Union company developed a scheme that allowed it to pulse the the time to these clocks across the country at the start of each hour, thereby synchronizing them. The dry cell batteries powered a small electric motor that re-wound the clock's mechanical movement every hour. Since Western union already had telegraph lines this was a rather novel but practical way for a company to have precisely synchronized times at either end of the country. At the beginning of the hour all telegraph traffic was suspended while a brief signal was sent to all the clocks on the "network" and a solenoid in each clock would pull the hands to the correct hour position!
Sadly, the internal mechanism here is long since gone...replaced by a "sessions" movement.