“Hickory, dickory dock
The mouse ran up the clock
The clock struck one
The mouse ran down
Hickory dickory dock”
Funny but I’ve always associated this nursery rhyme with grandfather clocks. See, the mouse had to climb a tall clock.
Commonly called grandfather clocks, longcase clocks are tall (at least six-feet in height), pendulum-driven clocks. The pendulum is hidden inside the case. According to their movement, there are two types of grandfather clocks: 8-day and one-day (or 30-hour) movement. The movement of a clock is a measure of how accurate it is, it also aptly describes how long between clock windings. A clock with an 8-day movement needs to be wound once a week. And a 30-hour movement, needs to be wound daily.
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Vintage Grandmother Grandfather Clock Movement Gravely / Ridgeway US $12.50 |
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Elegant in their height, grandfather clocks were designed around the long pendulum and weights which power the clock. The long pendulum mechanism was a technological advancement. Before the advent of the grandfather clock, all pendulum clocks had pendulums with wide arcs. This resulted in faster pendulum swings, more friction and more wear and tear. Necessarily the case had to be wide and the pendulums short. The pendulum design of the grandfather clock needed only a smaller arc and a slower pendulum movement. However, to achieve this, the weights had to have a longer travel and the pendulum had to be longer as well. This resulted in more accurate timekeeping. Typically, the pendulum swings once per second.
The weights are also hidden in the long case. Typically there would be two or three weights, one weight to power the pendulum, another provides power to strike the hour and the if there was a third, this would be to power the chimes. Most modern grandfather clocks have either Westminster quarters chimes or Whittington chimes or St. Michael’s chimes. The chimes could be selected by a switch on the dial.
Types of longcase clocks include Comtoise clocks and Bornholm clocks. Comtoise clocks, also known as Morbier clocks or Morez clocks, were made in the French region Franche-Comté, hence the name. Bornholm clocks are danish longcase clocks encased in a tall wooden box and were made in Bornholm up to the early 1900s.
