Clocktime: Earliest Known Lantern Clock by Robert Harvey c1610, 03 Duration and movement

Robert Harvey – Balance wheel lantern clock, the earliest known English domestic clock, signed by English maker, London.

Join Dr John C Taylor OBE from the Clocktime digital museum as he discusses the duration and movement of the Earliest Known Lantern Clock, circa 1610.

Discover more about early and antique clocks and watches...

https://clocktime.co.uk/artefacts/har...


A clock like this only went for something like 10 or 12 hours and it had to be reset every day against a sundial because it's a friction device. This, it's like a mechanical egg timer that goes tick, tick, tick, tick. Well, this one goes tick, tick, but it's the same friction which releases the weight of the driving force and any error in the train, you can hear it change its tick. Some of them are shorter, some of a longer. And of course, it's got to have oil because it's got the brass wheels running on steel pinions and it needs oil in between the two and there was of course no mineral oil in those days. It was all vegetable oil, which got thin in summer or dried out and it got thick and stiff in winter, so any change in temperature during the day changed the running of the clock. And so, because it needed to be set every morning with the sundial and had to be wound, there was no point in making an eight-day clock because you'd still have to come to it to set the time. So, you'll find that all these early clocks tend to be quite short duration and it depended on the drop of the weights. And most of them only ran for 12 hours, so they ran overnight. You could wind them by pulling the weight down and then it would run until the following morning. But they are, they're better than a sundial, if the sun isn't shining.