An unusual clock

Not that unusual in clocks of that age. Several of those in my MILs house had similar mechanisms.

On 9 Dec 2017 16:16:43 GMT, Huge coalesced the vapors of human experience into a viable and meaningful comprehension...

Quite. The first clock I encountered that worked on this principle was in the dashboard of my grandfathers Hillman Minx.

I've always liked the Congreve clocks, although they are remarkably inaccurate!

I remember (1960s) one with a similar mechanism, mechanical time keeping but electric winding.

On 9 Dec 2017 18:30:05 GMT, Bob Eager coalesced the vapors of human experience into a viable and meaningful comprehension...

I like digital clocks. Here is a video I shot of my favourite one ;-)

I have a feeling that that make made novelties. When I worked for a TV company, one of the blokes showed me what was called an atmospheric clock. It bore the same name as yours but the battery in this case powered a tiny heater in a cylinder with some kind of valve arrangement. The piston drove a kind of escapement which kept the clock wound up. What I never did figure out was that how it knew it was unwound enough to allow the battery. a U11 to start the piston again. I suppose there must have been some little microswitch somewhere as the spring unwound. The question is, why go to all that bother in the first place? Brian

Brian Gaff submitted this idea :

And I suppose this is an early MIDI implementation.