Philip Woodward - W5 Clock

W5 Clock

"W5" was built in a small workshop with the simplest of tools, but displays an elegance of concept and design rarely seen in the history of the science. It was acclaimed by Jonathan Betts, the Senior Curator of Horology at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich as "the nearest approach to perfection by any mechanical timekeeper not employing a vacuum chamber". Woodward built even the case, assembling it with intricate but invisible secret mitre joints.

The eminent horologist Anthony Randall carried on a long series of timekeeping trials of W5, showing unprecedented accuracy over periods of more than 100 days. Although the clock was widely celebrated, and Dr. Woodward published a series of ever-more-detailed articles on its construction to encourage others to carry its ideas forward, no one completed another clock like it for more than twenty years. Finally, in 2006 the Australian clockmaker David Walter (now of Buellton, California) succeeded in making a highly skeletonized version that while quite different in details, closely followed the basic Woodward design.