Method of Operation
An electric motor (often synchronous, if directly connected to the AC line) turns two sets of wheels continuously via a reduction gear train: the faster at a rate of 1 revolution per hour, the slower at a rate of 1 revolution per 24 hours. The wheels move continuously, not in steps.
The faster wheel has connected to it a ring of 60 flat plastic "leaves". On the "leaves" are printed numerals so that, when a person holds two adjacent "leaves" apart like an open book, the two open "leaves" spell out a numeral, and flipping a "leaf" down increases the number shown by 1 unit. The "book" is opened vertically, and its pages form a ring. This ring is put into position and rotated so that one page falls each minute, showing a new number for the minutes.
The slower wheel has connected to it a similar ring of "leaves", only there are 48 "leaves" on this ring. These "leaves" have hour numbers printed on them. There are two of each hour, like this: 12am, 12am, 1am, 1am, 2am, 2am, ... 11pm, 11pm. One leaf falls each half-hour, at approximately 25 and 55 minutes after the hour. A different design features 60 "leaves" with the numbers 1 to 12 repeated in fives, each leaf falling after 12 minutes. The disadvantage of this is that there is no way to show "AM" or "PM" information.
Minute leaves 45 through 59 have a small tooth on them. The purpose of this tooth is as follows: at 45 minutes after the hour, the tooth pushes a lever that protrudes into the hour wheel area. This lever will catch any falling hour leaf, so that it will hold the current hour leaf in place until it is time for the new hour to start.
Read more about this topic: Flip Clock
Famous quotes containing the words method of, method and/or operation:
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—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis. We call intuition here the sympathy by which one is transported into the interior of an object in order to coincide with what there is unique and consequently inexpressible in it. Analysis, on the contrary, is the operation which reduces the object to elements already known.”
—Henri Bergson (1859–1941)