Community Stories

Understanding Mechanical Watches for Engineers, Mathematicians, and Physicists

purechaos78
Posts
35
Likes
49
I recently came across this book entitled "The Mechanics of Mechanical Watches and Clocks" that delves into the mechanics of how a mechanical watch operates. It gets pretty deep in the weeds with dynamic analysis if that is your sort of thing. I am not insinuating that only engineers, mathematicians, and physicists can enjoy the book, rather, those of us with the prior knowledge will have less of a hurdle to surpass when reading through. Hope you all enjoy this!

Here is the link to the google doc. You can download as a PDF.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WjXI41YExAfFjEtJKxQGHihgWMrWqvmd/view?usp=sharing
 
MRC
Posts
3,551
Likes
8,946
Thanks for that. Not sure how much dynamics I can remember from college, but I'll give it a try 🤔
 
Canuck
Posts
15,643
Likes
46,677
I was talking to a friend recently, about a weight driven pendulum clock that he serviced for a professional engineer. The clock ran five days, and quit. The cabinet was a 19th century, rickety affair, sitting on a carpet with under padding. My friend pointed out that the weights had descended to the point they were at the same centre of gravity as the swinging pendulum. As the pendulum swung, the weights started to swing at the same rate, but opposite to the swinging of the pendulum! This was because the rickety old case started swaying! The guy argued that this would NOT make any difference to the operation of the clock! He was probably a brilliant engineer, but he sure didn’t understand clocks. My friend suggested the clock would need to be fastened to the wall, to stop the case from swaying! The guy was adamant that this should not be necessary. My friend could see it was useless talking to the guy, so his final word of advice to him as let left his premises, was that it would be necessary for him to wind the clock twice a week, to keep the weights high enough to stop them swaying counter to the pendulum. (My friend never heard how the guy made out. He probably screwed it to the wall, rather than to admit to a mere clockmaker that he might be wrong!)
 
Flintlock
Posts
164
Likes
78
That looks like the tidal effect in operation. Some guy has a video with like ten metronomes he puts on a sheet of plywood with some rollers under it to speed of the demonstration. They started at various times but in no time were all beating in perfect synch.
 
Stripey
Posts
572
Likes
754
Just downloaded the book, and got hooked reading it. And I’m definitely not an engineer, mathematician or physicist!
 
wagudc
Posts
4,834
Likes
12,223
Canuck Canuck
He was probably a brilliant engineer, but he sure didn’t understand clocks.

How brilliant of an engineer can he be if he can't understand the mechanics of clocks, or investigate further the information he is given by a clockmaker who has considerable experience with the mechanisms?

On a somewhat related topic. I had an Accutron (360hz) and an F300 (300hz) tuning fork watches stored in same watch box next to each other. The Accutron ran a bit slow, and the F300 was pretty close to spot on. I sold the the Accutron, and now it seems the F300 is running a little slow.
I believe that putting the two watches next to each other brought the frequencies closer together, slowing down the Accutron and speeding up the F300. I think the Accutron may have been regulated correctly and the F300 was running a little slow. Putting them together made the Accutron look bad and the F300 look good, when in fact the reverse was true. Have you ever noticed this interaction? I believe it is possible in a similar way to @Syzygys video.
 
BlackTalon
Posts
5,528
Likes
9,451
wagudc wagudc
How brilliant of an engineer can he be if he can't understand the mechanics of clocks, or investigate further the information he is given by a clockmaker who has considerable experience with the mechanisms?
Easy. Maybe he was an electrical engineer. Those people know everything.

😁
 
JimInOz
Posts
18,201
Likes
37,960
Canuck Canuck
I was talking to a friend recently, about a weight driven pendulum clock that he serviced for a professional engineer. The clock ran five days, and quit. The cabinet was a 19th century, rickety affair, sitting on a carpet with under padding. My friend pointed out that the weights had descended to the point they were at the same centre of gravity as the swinging pendulum. As the pendulum swung, the weights started to swing at the same rate, but opposite to the swinging of the pendulum! This was because the rickety old case started swaying! The guy argued that this would NOT make any difference to the operation of the clock! He was probably a brilliant engineer, but he sure didn’t understand clocks. My friend suggested the clock would need to be fastened to the wall, to stop the case from swaying! The guy was adamant that this should not be necessary. My friend could see it was useless talking to the guy, so his final word of advice to him as let left his premises, was that it would be necessary for him to wind the clock twice a week, to keep the weights high enough to stop them swaying counter to the pendulum. (My friend never heard how the guy made out. He probably screwed it to the wall, rather than to admit to a mere clockmaker that he might be wrong!)

The engineer was unfamiliar with sympathetic resonance / coupled oscillations / entrainment?

The engineer obviously never heard of Christiaan Huygens who discovered the phenomena in 1665.

Here's an interesting article explaining and experimenting things, even has pictures of the clocks used for the experiments.
 
connieseamaster
Posts
1,372
Likes
2,000
BlackTalon BlackTalon
Easy. Maybe he was an electrical engineer. Those people know everything.

😁
As someone who is dating an electrical engineer, this is checks out. ::stirthepot::

As a structural engineer myself, the whole resonance theory makes sense, but my dynamics is rusty enough that I wouldn't definitively dismiss it out of hand.
 
Archer
Posts
29,904
Likes
77,344
connieseamaster connieseamaster
As someone who is dating an electrical engineer, this is checks out. ::stirthepot::

As a structural engineer myself, the whole resonance theory makes sense, but my dynamics is rusty enough that I wouldn't definitively dismiss it out of hand.

Could be worse...could be a “software engineer “...
 
MRC
Posts
3,551
Likes
8,946
Archer Archer
Could be worse...could be a “software engineer “...

Dodged the bullet

I just checked my last business card "Consultant Development Engineer", nothing about software thank goodness 😀 That was most of the job though.


But my early career as a mechanical engineer made me think resonance right away.
 
Sign up or log in to reply...