Electric Clock - History

History

In 1814, Sir Francis Ronalds (1788) of London invented the forerunner of an electric clock, the electrostatic clock. His prototype was powered with a dry pile battery. It proved unreliable in timekeeping, however, because of a strong dependence on a stable room temperature and 'weather conditions'.

In 1815, Giuseppe Zamboni (1776-1846) of Verona invented and showed another electrostatic clock run with dry pile battery and an oscillating orb. Over the test of time Zamboni's clock was praised "the most elegant and at the same time the most simple movement yet produced by the electric column". Zamboni's clock had a vertical needle supported by a pivot and was so energy efficient that it could operate on one battery for over 50 years.

In 1840, Alexander Bain (1811-1877), a Scottish clock and instrument maker was the first to invent and patent the electric clock. His original electric clock patent is dated October 10, 1840. On January 11, 1841, Alexander Bain along with John Barwise, a chronometer maker, took out another important patent describing a clock in which an electromagnetic pendulum and an electric current is employed to keep the clock going instead of springs or weights. Later patents expanded on his original ideas.

Numerous people were intent on inventing the electric clock with electromechanical and electromagnetic designs around the year 1840, such as Wheatstone, Steinheil, Hipp, Breguet, and Garnier, both in Europe and America.

Matthias Hipp (1813-1893), clockmaker born in Germany, is credited with establishing the production series, mass marketable electric clock. Hipp opened a workshop in Reutlingen, Switzerland, where he developed an electric clock to have the Hipp-Toggle, presented in Berlin at an exhibition in 1843. The Hipp-Toggle is a device attached to a pendulum or balance wheel that electro-mechanically allows occasional impulse or drive to the pendulum or wheel as its amplitude of swing drops below a certain level, and is so efficient that it was subsequently used in electric clocks for over a hundred years. Hipp also invented a small motor and built the chronoscope and the registering chronograph for time measurement.

The first electric clocks had prominent pendulums because this was a familiar shape and design. Smaller clocks and watches with a spiral-balance are made on the same principles as pendulum clocks.

Henry Ellis Warren (1872-1957) invented the first synchronous electric clock which kept time from the oscillations of the power grid, in 1918. The first commercial synchronous electric clock sold in the UK, the Synclock, was brought out in 1931.