The Cinquemani “Chronologe”

Abstract

THIS is a very singular and interesting contrivance. It is a clock with only one toothed wheel, yet it shows the hours, minutes, days of the week, &c, and strikes the hours and quarters at each quarter of an hour. Moreover, there is an arrangement for repeating the hours and quarters at will. The single toothed wheel spoken of is the escape-wheel, and this propels a pair of pallets and pendulum in the ordinary way. The rest of the work is done in the fall of a small leaden ball, a long chain of these balls being intermittingly elevated, and one of them discharged over a revolving drum each quarter of an hour. We will follow one of these balls through the course of its multifarious duties. It first enters a sling in a tape wound over the escape-wheel axle, and we notice that it is the weight of this and three other balls (which have been previously deposited in preceding slings) which is keeping the escape-wheel going. As the wheel turns round, the balls descend, and after a quarter of an hour the lowest will have arrived at a funnel-shaped opening, where it will get liberated from its sling, and fall. It first strikes a lever which enables the drum to move on and discharge another ball into a sling upon the escape- wheel tape. Then rushing down a tube it enters a zigzag. It is within this zigzag that the striking of the quarters is performed, for at each of its angles a bell is placed, against which the ball strikes sharply as it passes them. After leaving this zigzag, the ball is projected down another,where it strikes the hours. As the number of blows to be struck is regulated by a similar contrivance at each zigzag, we will confine our attention to that for the hours.The channel down which the ball passes is vertical to the face of the zigzag. Now the front or zigzag side of this channel is a moving tape, which carries a little trap. As the tape is always moving, the position of the trap depends upon the time, and the position of the trap also determines the stage of the zigzag upon which the ball will be projected. Thus, when the trap is opposite the sixth stage of the zigzag, the ball will encounter six corners upon its way down, and consequently six blows will be sounded. When the trap is at the top, twelve blows are sounded; and when the trap is at the bottom, no blows are sounded. When the ball leaves the zigzag, it enters a sling at the lowest part of the chain first spoken of, and is intermittingly carried up again to begin its work over again. For repeating the hours and quarters at will, there is a separate reservoir of smaller balls; and by pulling a handle one of these can be discharged above the first zigzag, and when it has done its work it disappears through a hole, which the regular balls cannot penetrate, back to its own reservoir. It may be mentioned that, in lieu of bells, the hour zigzag has a single vertical sonorous tube for each set of corners. The time, days of the week, &c, are shown by means of tapes carrying pointers suspended over the escape-wheel and another axle. The inventor, the Rev. Canon Cinquemani, maintains that the simplicity and precision, by reason of the constant force on the escapement of his “chronologe” (which he has patented), render it peculiarly advantageous for missionary and other distant stations, where the assistance of professional clockmakers is not readily procurable.