Clock

Clock

Any instrument other than a watch for measuring or indicating time, especially a mechanical or electronic device having a numbered dial and moving hands or a digital display.

Industry: Chronometry

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Clock

In better-quality lever escapements the pallets are made from rectangular jewels known as 'stones'. Regulator clocks with dead-beat escapements have the acting faces of the pallets jewelled. These ...

pallet arbor

Chronometry; Clock

Or pallet staff: the axis of the pallets.

pallet

Chronometry; Clock

A catching device that regulates the speed of a clock by releasing one notch of a toothed wheel (ratchet wheel) at each swing of the pendulum or turn of the balance wheel. The unit is usually known ...

painted dial

Chronometry; Clock

Painted dials were introduced shortly after the middle of the 18th century. The design of regional brass clock dials had become so cluttered with decoration, auxiliary dials and sometimes as many as ...

pagoda top

Chronometry; Clock

A term occasionally applied to the curved, oriental tops of some 18th century bracket clocks, based on the Europeanised version of the Chinese pagoda roof. The form was an element of rococo ...

oyster-shell veneer

Chronometry; Clock

A type of veneer used on the cabinetwork of longcase clocks, which was produced by cutting the smaller boughs of walnut and laburnum trees in thin slices across the grain. When these are arranged in ...

orrery clock

Chronometry; Clock

A clock mounted with a mechanism of rotating spheres designed to show the relative sizes, positions and motions (but not distances) of the heavenly bodies. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries ...