Lantern Clock - Obsolescence

Obsolescence

Lantern clocks were produced in vast numbers during the decades before the pioneering invention of the pendulum by the Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens in 1656. Before this invention, lantern clocks used a balance wheel lacking a balance spring for their timekeeping element, which limited their accuracy to perhaps 15 minutes per day. Shortly after Huygens' invention, the bob pendulum was introduced in England, and most English clockmakers adopted the new system quickly. The pendulum increased the accuracy of clocks so greatly that many existing clocks were converted, with pendulums being added at the back. Measuring time became much more accurate but most clockmakers kept building lantern clocks without minute hands: this maybe just a matter of tradition. The result was that clockmakers started to develop other types of domestic clocks. Longcase clocks with 8-day movements made lantern clocks obsolete and gradually lantern clocks disappeared from the London interiors in the first decades of the 18th century. In rural areas lantern clocks were produced until the beginning of the 19th century and in those years they were also exported to countries like Turkey, and supplied with oriental numbers on their dials. In the Victorian era there was a revival of interest in antique lantern clocks. Unfortunately this also meant that many clocks of renowned makers were stripped of their movements, which were replaced by 'modern' winding movements. Nowadays unmodified original lantern clocks are very rare.