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1. Chapter One of Keeping Watch: A History of American Time
By Michael O'Malley. Reproduced here from the unedited manuscript In 1826 New Haven's town fathers paid Eli Terry, Connecticut's most celebrated clock maker, $200 to install a clock in the town hall. They wanted a proud symbol of their commitment to order, regular habits and the virtue of conserving time, and at first the clock served them well. But soon they noticed a growing disagreement with their other source of public time, the Yale College clock. Gradually Terry's clock fell farther and farther behind its rival--five, ten, then fifteen minutes. Perhaps it only needed adjusting. Then it slowly began catching up, raising hopes that it might settle down into steady work as it matured. But instead with each passing day it moved ahead of Yale's timepiece. Finally, almost fifteen minutes faster, Terry's perverse clock began sinking back into its old slothful habits, only to once again start gaining on the faithful college clock, week by week. Had Terry saddled the city fathers with an incompetent timekeeper, or some reckless whimsy?

2. Reading Hamilton's Clocks: Time Consciousness
Wandering the main corridor of the New-York Historical Society, visitors pause to linger before a colossal, curvaceous, mahogany-veneered tall case clock. (Figure 1) Viewers ponder the clock's unorthodox shape, impressive size, and massive, naked face. From the exhibit card mounted beside the clock, museum-goers learn that Founding Father and famed New Yorker Alexander Hamilton donated the clock to the Bank of New York in 1796 (Figure 2). Legend holds that Hamilton concurrently presented an identical clock to the first Bank of United States, Philadelphia branch (Figure 3). In scale and shape, the New York clock appears quite unlike typical long-case 'grandfather' clocks from the period.

3. The Hands of Time
THE STRUTT EPICYCLIC TRAIN CLOCK. A work of art that will forever be cherished by your heirs. This is one of the most interesting of all single train skeleton clocks ever conceived. First made by an Englishman, William Strutt, it has a number of interesting and extremely unusual features not found in other clocks. Its 8-day run, spring driven train is epicyclic (planetary gearing) and involves a ring wheel of 4-1/2" ID and 5-1/2 OD teeth. The motion work is based on the Ferguson Mechanical Paradox instead of the normal 12 to 1 gear train. To allow individual setting of the hands, the collets are of most unusual design. Both beautiful and unusual in the extreme, this clock is an excellent time keeper, which any Videomaker will be proud to have made. TRAIN—The center arbor carries the minute hand and is driven by a fusee/great-wheel assembly. Fixed to the center arbor is a a planet arm having a counterweight on one end and a planet wheel and pinion on the other end. A sun wheel is fixed to the dial and cannot rotate. The planet pinion engages this wheel and is forced to rotate while being moved around it by the planet arm. The planet wheel drives the internal teeth of the ring wheel, which is free to rotate on the center arbor. The external teeth of the ring wheel drive the escape wheel pinion. A conventional recoil escapement drives the pendulum.

Clocks