Abstract
AT the British Horological Institute in London, on January 12, an interesting discussion was held on the respective merits of spring-wound and electric clocks. Mr. D. W. Barrett, of Smith's English Clocks, Ltd., began by pointing out that his. firm has large investments in spring-driven clocks and its business was founded on them. He claimed to be impartial and he would not have taken up the electric type had he not been assured of its future. A spring-wound clock cannot be relied upon to give accurate time. It needs regular winding and its parts are delicate. The electric clock needs no attention and is robust. It is true that it stops when the current fails, but on the average this only happens once a year. There are areas where no break has been recorded for three years. In the United States, 66 per cent of the sales were of electric clocks. In Great Britain about 33 per cent of the money spent on clocks last year was for electric clocks of the synchronous type. When it is remembered that the spring-wound clock has been in existence for three hundred years whilst the electric clock has only been on the market for some seven years it will be seen that the latter is the more popular. There are about 45 million clocks in use in Great Britain, the bulk of them being spring-driven. There can be little doubt but that the electric clock will be the clock of the future. It is practically immune from the effects of heat and damp.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
The Clock of the Future. Nature 141, 507 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/141507b0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/141507b0