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Steam Clocks

Concept and Considerations

There may have been steam clocks before – however, the first famous steam clock in Europe we got notice of is one built by the British mechanic, engineer and inventor John Inshaw (1807—1893) of Aston, Birmingham (GB).

Inshaw was really into steam engineering – a.o. he is known for his construction of a steam carriage in 1881 – and therefore decided to celebrate (and propagate) the power and benefits of steam with a steam clock.

In 1859, Inshaw bought a public building in Ladywood, Birmingham. On this building he installed the mentioned steam clock.
The construction was based on a small boiler producing steam. When the steam condensed, droplets of water fell down on a plate that was operating the steam clock's core mechanism.
[For details see ]]Chris Upton's Article on John Inshaw's Steam Clock[[ at ]]Digital Ladywood[[]

Note: This mechanism seems to be quite similar to those sported by early Elementaruhren (see ibid.) – more precisely: early water clocks.

While Inshaw's steam clock obviously proved to be an attraction, it seems like it did not unleash a whole wave of steam clock installments – at least we could not find any related documents.

However, more recently a whole variety of steam clocks have been constructed and installed in different places worldwide.

Probably the most prominent public steam clocks are those built by Canadian clockmaker Raymond Saunders, first of which was installed in Vancouver, Canada, in 1977.
At the core of Saunder's steam clocks' mechanism is, of course, a steam engine that is the driving force for a gear train combined with an ascending chain lift lifting ball weights upwards. Here the balls are taken into another rotating mechanism that is connected to the clock movement mechanism.
In addition to that, the clock has three supporting electric motors (a.o. driving the air circulation).
A special feature of Saunders' clocks is their chimes, consisting of steam whistles sitting on the top of the clock. They are tuned to play melodies related to the place where the steam clock is installed.
[For a more detailed description of Saunders' steam clocks see the ]]related paragraph[[ in the ]]Wikipedia entry on Steam Clocks[[; plus Raymond Saunders' ]]Landmark Clocks International[[.]

We will proceed with some research on steam clock mechanisms anyway – however, the steam clocks mentioned so far are obviously built to display local standard time(s).

Yet, in the framework of TBC research we are far more interested in alternate concepts for time pieces in general – and in this case for steam clocks respectively.

As a matter of fact, we have meanwhile also found alternate steam clock models and mechanisms worth to mention here.



Among these are i.e. the Bratislava Street Bakery Steam Clocks.
They are driven by the small ovens in the bakery huts. The public display of Street Bakery Steam Clocks is usually to be found at (and identical with) one side, sometimes also the back of the small hut – basically an otherwise "naked" wall with the steam pipe in the center. Whenever the oven inside is fully heated, steam evaporates through the pipe's end.
Thus, the steam clock is driven by the oven, and – for the oven is heated whenever the pastries run out an new ones are needed – also by the stream of people buying pastries.
The pastries are usually bought by people rushing to their workplaces for breakfast (or for lunchtime).
So in the end the Street Bakery Steam Clocks are ticking at the interface of individual and social life/work time – and in a way they are driven by people's stomaches.

Note: We also tried to document the Street Bakery Steam Clocks on photographs and will be hopefully be able to add some illustrations soon.

Btw. we could also mention some artists that have been very close to build steam clocks, i.e. Marcel Duchamp and later also Joseph Beuys (who also used the phase "Christus Erfinder der Dampfmaschine" – "Christ, inventor of the steam engine" coined by Rudolf Steiner for one of his works). However, in the end both very only close…

Related Entries:
[Alternate Clocks]
[Alternate Time Pieces]
[Elementaruhren]

tags: clocks, clockworks, time

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