Hi Hal,
I have one of these big (maybe 14" dia) old office clocks, still
working, hanging on the garage wall at the farm, next to a modern WWVB
clock. I don't worry about what time it says, but I sometimes look to
estimate total power outage time (can be quite a lot up there) since the
last reset. I think it's around sixty years old. It has the flag
indicator as described, that resets when you pull the time set knob at
the bottom.
I remember when I was a kid, I either repaired or junked out many of the
Telechron (I think that was GE's brand name for it) clocks, which were
the standard for nearly all AC-powered clocks at the time. There was no
gray area in the failures - the sealed motor either worked or not, and
if it did work, then the problem was in the external gear train (almost
always from dirt and lint). I took apart many of the motors to see how
they worked (or didn't). The usual failure was that the oil fill leaked
out. Sometimes, the little magnetic rotor would loose enough of its
reluctance that it wouldn't start reliably or have enough torque to run
the gearbox.
I also lived in Syracuse (actually Liverpool, one of the burbs) for a
while. I remember in 8th grade, we went on a class tour of NiMo's brand
new nuclear plant at Nine Mile Point, just before it was commissioned.
Fascinating.
Ed
_______________________________________________
time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@lists.febo.com
To unsubscribe, go to
http://lists.febo.com/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts_lists.febo.com
and follow the instructions there.
