[time-nuts] 1903 Railroad self-Winding / Self-setting Clock

Mike Baker mpb45 at clanbaker.org
Fri Oct 31 21:29:46 EDT 2014


Hello, Time-Nutters--

A friend has a vintage oak-cabinet pendulum movement
clock made by The Self Winding Clock Company some time
around 1903.  The company was formed in 1886.  By the
early 1900's era, this clock was known for its relative
accuracy.  These clocks were pendulum controlled and
powered by a rather small and frequently reset
mainspring that was wound hourly by a set of 1.5 VDC
dry-cell batteries.  In 1890 (?) the Naval Observatory agreed
to telegraph standard railway time.    Western Union,
which also owned the Self-Winding Clock Company, sold
these clocks to the railroads and sent the hourly time
coordinating signals around the country by telegraph.
My friend has one of the railroad clocks that has the
Western Union Telegraph hourly resetting option.

My friend thought it would be an interesting juxtaposition
of technology from two different eras by creating the
momentary 3-volt resetting pulse every hour from a
GPS disciplined oscillator / clock pulse.

I am wondering what the easiest approach to this might
be?    I suppose I could take the 1-sec pulses from a
GPSDO (Trimble Thunderbolt ?) and count 3600 of them
to generate a momentary reset 3VDC signal.   In any event,
I thought I would pass this by the Time-Nuts gang to see
if any feedback is available as to what the least complicated
(simplest) way might be to accomplish this.

Mike Baker
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