Читать книгу The Modern Clock. A Study of Time Keeping Mechanism; Its Construction, Regulation and Repair онлайн

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A good clock is one of the very necessary foundation elements, contributing very largely to equip the skilled mechanic and verify his work. Without some reliable means to get accurate mean time a watchmaker is always at sea—without a compass—and has to trust to his faith and a large amount of guessing, and this is always an embarrassment, no matter how skilled he may be in his craft, or adept in guessing. What I want to call particular attention to is the unreliable and worthless character of the average regulator of the present day. A good clock is not necessarily a high priced instrument and it is within the reach of most watchmakers. A thoroughly good and reliable timekeeper of American make is to be had now in the market for less than one hundred dollars, and the only serious charge that can be made against these clocks is that they cost the consumer too much money. Any of them are thirty-three and a third per cent higher than they should be. About seventy-five dollars will furnish a thoroughly good clock. The average clock to be met with in the watchmakers’ shops is the Swiss imitation gridiron pendulum, pin escapement, and these are of the low grades as a rule; the best grades of them rarely ever get into the American market. Almost without exception, the Swiss regulator, as described, is wholly worthless as a standard, as the pendulums are only an imitation of the real compensated pendulum. They are an imitation all through, the bob being hollow and filled with scrap iron, and the brass and steel rods composing the compensating element, along with the cross-pieces or binders, are all of the cheapest and poorest description. If one of these pendulums was taken away from the movement and a plain iron bob and wooden rod put to the movement, in its place, the possessor of any such clock would be surprised to find how much better average rate the clock would have the year through, although there would then be no compensating mechanism, or its semblance, in the make-up of the pendulum. In brief, the average imitation compensation pendulum of this particular variety is far poorer than the simplest plain pendulum, such as the old style, grandfather clocks were equipped with. A wood rod would be far superior to a steel one, or any metal rod, as may be seen by consulting the expansion data given in the previous chapter.