Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent little book, 4 Mar 2009
Another little gem from Shire Books: fascinating, well written and well illustrated. Hugh Rock (the organic soft drinks magante) rescued a clock from a Methodist Chapel in Yorkshire, from which his interest stems. The history and technological development of church clocks is described with clarity and knowledge, and the author's obvious enthusiasm shines through.
|
|
|
4.0 out of 5 stars
Church clocks, 3 Sep 2009
One of our best friends is a clockmaker (literally) and we bought the book for him. He was thrilled because he has worked on several of the clocks mentioned, said he couldn't put the book down! Not for everyone, though.
|
|
|
5.0 out of 5 stars
Magic. An insight into a hidden world., 21 April 2009
This is a beautifully written book. It has everything that you could want - detailed information, terrific humour and a real insight into the development of what was once a new technology. I haven't enjoyed any book as much in a long time. The author's enthusiasm shines out of his writing, together with his expert knowledge of the subject. The illustrations and photographs are excellent and complement the text perfectly. I acquired this book more or less at random but was hooked from the first page.
The Introduction immediately engages the reader with the subject. Hugh Rock says that the beauty of church clocks "lies in the honest functioning of their gears and the polished metal fo their precision parts". He believes that these clocks are "worth befriending as they have a special charm". Having read the book I do agree.
The next chapter, "Fuliot Clocks 1280-1670," describes when church clocks first appeared in the 1280s. Sadly no-one knows who inevnted the device, a series of gears that operate the complex idea of a clock which includes the concept of escapement in which gears are moved in tiny increments. This early system that predated the pendulum, the verge and foliot system, is still visible at Salisbury Cathedral. This chapter also looks at the development of dials, which were probably internal before they were placed on the exterior of churches. There is a fascinating paragraph looking at the energy required to work a clock of this sort: "There is a strict limit to the energy output of a human being, about 40 watts (enough for two light bulbs), yet a person winding energetically can raise a 125kg weight to the top of a 20 metre tower in about two minutes, and thereby power the clock for a whole week . . . . If the clock had a human appetite, one pint of beer would be enough to keep it running for twenty weeks". Fun stuff.
In the next chapter the introduction of the pendulum is discussed, a device which was introduced after 300 years without technological advance. The design considerations necessary to accomodate the swing othe pendulum and protect them from draughts influenced the internal furnishings of churches. The physics of the pendulum may sound like a tedious idea but Rock makes the subject fascinating.
The next chapter compares the virtues of the foliot versus the pendulum, and introduces the idea of flexible hours (hours of different lengths) with fixed hours. Rock suggests that the need for fixed hours and increasing accuracy came with industrialization, navigation and, specifically, the railways.
In the chapter on pre-Victorian craftsmanship Rock explains how clock making was becoming divided between accuracies associated with engineering and the less accurate but more thoughtful job of clock-making as a craft.
In the next chapter, "Victorian Engineering," the ideas of standardisation and mass production are introduced - the result of cast iron which meant that casts could be used and re-used to create identical parts. A building boom created by the 1818 Church Building Act resulted in 600 new churches but the newly affordable church-type clocks were now finding their way into railway stations, hospitals and a variety of other buildings too.
Electric clocks are described in brief. The first patent was registered in 1841 and an example was produced for the Great Exhibition. As Rock says an electric clock is only as reliable as the supply of electricity, and batteries were still early technology. It was only with the formation of the National Grid in 1936 that electric clocks became a practical solution. The electric clock demolished the traditional clock-making trades.
The final chapter looks at bells and chimes. The number of bells and the tunes possible are made fascinating by Rock. A chime is a technical term used to describe tunes that can be played on three or more bells. With only two bells a tune cannot be composed by when there are three or more there is the potential for variety. In this chapter Rock shows the musical notation for chimes at a number of churches. Elgar, it emerges, failed to compose a suitable chime for St Mary's Church in Easton Socon becuase the clock mechanism was not up ot the job.
This a fascinating insight into a subject that I had never thought about before. As I said at the beginning of this review, the book is beautifully written and the writer never makes the mistake of trying to cram too much information into a short space. It is beautifully paced. There are many colour photographs and diagrams that serve to bring out points in the text and these help the reader to engage with the subject matter.
I got immense pleasure out of this book and would recommend it without reservations. A real discovery.
|
|
|
|
by Matthew Rice
by David Rooney
by Jonathan Betts
by Christopher St.J.H. Daniel
by Peter Wotton
