Time and Time-TellersBenson, James W., active 1857-1887
Philosophy
Time and Time-Tellers
Benson, James W., active 1857-1887
Clocks and watches
In order to set the Clock to the hour of the day, the minute-hand
should be turned on carefully forward with the finger and thumb, the
setter pausing as he reaches the XII. and the VI., to allow the Clock
to strike each hour and half-hour.
If the striking should at any time be wrong, and it should strike the
hour at the half-hour, or the half-hour at the hour, the error can be
rectified by moving the minute-hand on to 5 minutes before the hour,
or half-hour, and then back until it strikes.
Or, if it should strike a wrong hour--_e.g._, supposing the Clock
should strike 3, and the hour-hand point at 7, then the hour-hand may
be moved back to 3, and the Clock afterwards set to the hour of the
day in the usual manner.
If, at any future time, the Clock should require regulating, the small
steel square above the XII. is the regulator, and turning it a
_little_ to the right (half-turn of key) will make the Clock go
faster, and to the left, slower. This should be repeated until the
desired effect is obtained.
The bell-stud, or arm to which the bell is screwed, is purposely made
of soft metal, so that it can be bent up or down so as to obtain a
heavy or light blow of the hammer as may be desired.
Both squares in the dial should be wound once a week.
TURRET CLOCKS.
A Church tower without a clock and bells seems an unfurnished edifice,
which must be fitted and filled before it can serve the purpose for
which it was built;--like a form without life, a body without a soul.
A good Church clock is useful to everybody; it is the friendly monitor
alike of rich and poor,--the regulator of every private
time-piece,--the standard of time for a whole parish or township. By
it the artisan or mechanic trudges off to his daily labour; by it the
tradesman opens and closes his shop; by it the schoolboy is admonished
as 'with shining morning face he creeps like snail unwillingly to
school;' by it the law itself regulates its penalties,--(enacting, as
it does, house-breaking between nine at night and six in the morning
to be the heavier crime of burglary;)--by it, in a word, are all the
multifarious transactions of everyday life more or less regulated and
measured, and when the church clock stops, it produces a social
discomfort and anarchy throughout a whole neighbourhood, to an extent
scarcely credible. A good public clock is a benefit to all,--a faulty
one is a general nuisance and a continual source of irritation. A
public clock is in its way as necessary as the public highway, the
public market, the public law itself. It is the product and the symbol
of advanced civilization, the one everwakeful watchman and trusty
friend of all, by whose chimes the sleepless merchant has often
planned his ventures or sighed o'er apprehended losses and dangers;
the student busied with researches has consumed the midnight oil; the
sick have counted their hours of pain, longing in the night for the
dawn, in the daytime for the night. On the other hand, when one like
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