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Vocabulary > Time > Clock, watch, hour
Electric Time Co. employee Walter Rodriguez cleans the face of
an 84-inch Wegman clock
at the plant in Medfield, Mass. Thursday, Oct. 30, 2008.
AP Photo/Elise Amendola
Boston Globe > Big Picture > At work
February 20, 2009
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/02/at_work.html
Greenwich clock.
Photographie numérique prise par les
Anglonautes,
August 2006.
Copyright Anglonautes.
time
timepiece
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5425798.ece
hour
hour by hour
hourglass
Earth Hour - in pictures
At 8:30pm on Saturday 26th March 2011,
landmarks across the world switch off their lights
for one hour in a bid to
highlight global climate change
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2011/mar/26/earth-hour-climate-change-energy
wee hours
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/23/us/23awake.html
clock
wall clock
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/gallery/2010/jan/28/10-best-wall-clocks
atomic clock
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/dec/30/leap-second-new-year
the Doomsday Clock at the University of Chicago
The symbolic clock face, maintained since 1947
by the board of directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at the
University of Chicago,
counts down to nuclear armageddon
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/10/doomsday-clock-ticks-closer-to-midnight
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/interactive/2010/jan/14/climate-change-nuclear-weapons
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/jan/14/doomsday-clock-nuclear-climate
chronophage clock
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2011/apr/17/chronophage-clock-science-museum
Big Ben
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2009/jul/10/big-ben-150th-anniversary
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5425798.ece
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/dec/30/leap-second-new-year
strike
set back one hour
eleventh hour
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/15/duane-buck-plea-rick-perry
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/26/chilcot-inquiry-iraq-invasion-lawyers
watch
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/christmas08/chrgif/the-50-best-watches-906070.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/
time-machines-our-chronic-obsession-with-watches-1026135.html
pocket watch
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/03/10/us/AP-Lincoln-Watch-Engraving.html
watchmaker
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/03/10/us/AP-Lincoln-Watch-Engraving.html
clock
fall back to
standard time
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-26-daylight-saving-time_x.htm
set the clock back
an hour
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-11-02-fallback_N.htm
alarm clock
round the clock
around-the-clock
society / the 24-hour society
http://money.guardian.co.uk/news_/story/0,1456,1302871,00.html
body clock
http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/privatelives/story/0,,2266613,00.html
wind
hand
five o'clock
Steve Sack
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune
Minnesota
Cagle
24 March 2009
clock on /
clock off
clocking-on system
punch
the clock
clock out
get
off the clock
off-the-clock work
work
off the clock
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/19/national/19clock.html
speaking clock
at seven sharp
at eight
at noon
half past six
in less than five hours
be an hour late
around midnight
at the stroke of midnight on Thursday
The Guardian p. 19
27.9.2004
The Guardian
Work p. 1
12.11.2005
So... what do you do all day?
With earnings figures released this week suggesting that the gap between
Britain's rich and poor is widening,
we invited a cross-section of the workforce to tell us about their daily
routines and wages
Ian Wylie The Guardian
Work pp. 2-3
Saturday November 12, 2005
http://money.guardian.co.uk/pay/story/0,,1640618,00.html
ILLUSTRATION: A RICHARD ALLEN
The Guardian
Office Hours p. 1
13.3.2006
Right to a reply
We are all hooked on the convenience of email,
but, new research shows, we hate
waiting for a response.
That's the price we pay for not picking up the phone, says Alice Wignall
The Guardian
Office Hours p. 1
Monday March 13, 2006
http://jobsadvice.guardian.co.uk/officehours/story/0,,1729323,00.html
The Guardian
Work p. 1
19.11.2005
Stretched to breaking point?
The right to request flexible hours has proved hugely successful, and is set to
be extended.
But, finds Andrew Shanahan, dissenting voices from employers
- and
nine-to-fivers - are starting to be heard
The Guardian Work
p. 3 Saturday November 19, 2005
http://money.guardian.co.uk/workweekly/story/0,16547,1645613,00.html
Museum Reveals Engraving Hidden in Lincoln Watch
March 10, 2009
Filed at 12:42 p.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) -- For nearly 150 years, a story has
circulated about a hidden Civil War message engraved inside one of Abraham
Lincoln's pocket watches. Now we know what it says.
On Tuesday at the National Museum of American History, a watchmaker used tiny
tools to open the pocket watch and reveal the message left during repairs in
1861.
The first line says: ''April 13, 1861. Fort Sumter was attacked by the rebels on
the above date. J. Dillon.'' A second line reads: ''April 13, 1861. Thank God we
have a government. Jonathan Dillon.''
Dillon's story circulated among his family and friends, eventually reaching a
New York Times reporter. In a 1906 article in the paper, Dillon said he was
moved to engrave a message after the first shots of the Civil War were fired in
South Carolina.
Museum Reveals
Engraving Hidden in Lincoln Watch, NYT, 10.3.2009,
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/03/10/us/AP-Lincoln-Watch-Engraving.html
Bong! Big Ben still rings out 150 years on
Building ‘the king of clocks’
was a triumph over adversity and
it moves with the times
January 1, 2009
From The Times
Valentine Low
“There is no reason,” said Mike McCann, the man in charge of
Big Ben, as he made his way down the 334 steps from the belfry at the top of the
tower, “why it should not last forever.” As the world’s most famous timepiece
celebrates its 150th anniversary, that is a forthright statement of faith in a
masterpiece of Victorian engineering that was deemed so ambitious at the time of
its inception that many clockmakers thought it could never be built.
That the Great Westminster Clock was completed was a triumph of perseverance and
ingenuity over ill-fortune and acrimony. Not only was the building of Big Ben
characterised by bitter rows between some of the key figures – the lawsuits
stretched on for some time afterwards – but also when the great bell that
actually bears the name Big Ben was tested it cracked, and had to be broken up
and recast.
Within a few months of being installed, the new bell cracked as well. The second
time the damage was not too bad, however, and, since being patched up and turned
a quarter-turn, the bell behind the “bongs” – was ever a musical note so
instantly recognisable? – has given all but uninterrupted service.
From today Big Ben – tourist landmark, London icon, symbol of parliamentary
democracy – begins a year of anniversary celebrations starting with the launch
of a website (www.parliament.uk/bigben). It is a very 21st-century way of
marking the survival of an institution that is rooted in the technology of
another era.
Three times a week – on Monday, Wednesday and Friday – the clock is wound up by
hand, a process that takes more than an hour because it is not possible to wind
while it is chiming. And when it is going a bit fast or a bit slow (which it
generally is, that being the nature of mechanical systems) a mechanic places or
removes a penny from the pendulum: an old, predecimal penny, of course; adding
one speeds up the clock by two-fifths of a second a day.
Mr McCann, who rejoices in the title of Keeper of the Great Clock, gives a
slightly embarrassed laugh when he is asked how he checks Big Ben. The answer is
that he does what everyone else does: he rings up the speaking clock. He does so
from the phone in the clock room at five to the hour precisely, starting a
stopwatch on the third pip, and then goes up the belfry to see when the hammer
on Big Ben strikes the hour. Simple, if not technologically sophisticated.
When the clock was commissioned as part of the rebuilding of the Palace of
Westminster after the fire of 1834, the Office of Works called for “a noble
clock, indeed a king of clocks, the biggest the world has ever seen, within
sight and sound of the throbbing heart of London”. The Astronomer Royal also
insisted on one that would be accurate to within a second, which was all very
well for a small indoor clock, but a tall order for such a huge one, which would
be constantly exposed to the elements. Most clockmakers thought that it was
impossible.
The man who proved otherwise was not even a professional clockmaker. Edmund
Beckett Denison was a leading barrister and gifted amateur horologist who got
himself involved in the selection of the final design, by the clockmaker Edward
Dent.
Denison made many revisions to Dent’s original drawing, but his greatest
contribution was to design a means of ensuring that the pendulum was separated
from the movement of the hands, so that it was not affected by the weather. His
ground-breaking invention, which is called a double three-legged gravity
escapement, is the reason that Big Ben keeps such good time.
Denison was not, however, a man to waste his energy on considering the feelings
of others. He made enemies wherever he went and, in the row over who was to
blame for the cracked bell, fought and lost two libel actions. In one he was
found to have befriended one of the technicians at the foundry that made the
bell, got him drunk and bullied him into giving false testimony that the fault
had been because of poor workmanship.
Accurate Big Ben may be, but it is not immune to failure. Over the years it has
been stopped by snow, mechanical failure and builders who have left paint pots
where they shouldn’t; on one occasion it was slowed down by a flock of starlings
settling on the minute hand.
It is, however, still going strong, and shows no sign of doing otherwise. “It is
a privilege to look after it,” said Mr McCann. “We live in a throwaway society,
and this is something that is going to be there for hundreds of years.”
The clock bombs failed to stop
— The bell – or Great Bell, nicknamed Big Ben – weighs 13.5 tonnes (30,000lbs)
— The clock was first started on May 31, 1859. Big Ben first struck the hour on
July 11 that year
— The BBC first broadcast the chimes on December 31, 1923
— The chimes are based on Handel’s Messiah, a phrase from the aria I Know that
My Redeemer Liveth. They were set to verse and the words inscribed on a plaque
in the clock room: All through this hour Lord be my Guide That by Thy Power No
foot shall slide
— When a bomb destroyed the Commons chamber in 1941, glass was blown out of the
south dial but the clock kept going
Source: Big Ben by Peter MacDonald
Bong! Big Ben still
rings out 150 years on, Ts, 1.1.2009,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5425798.ece
Urban Tactics
Time’s Guardian
June 3, 2007
The New York Times
By ELIZABETH GIDDENS
NEW YORKERS look to the time the way farmers look to the
weather. Many have their own idiosyncratic maps of public street clocks they
rely on, scurrying to work or late for appointments, but few would imagine that
so many of those clocks run thanks to a man named Marvin Schneider.
Mr. Schneider, who has been the city’s official clock master since 1992, is a
short and round 67-year-old with smiling eyes, a salt-and-pepper mustache and a
grandfatherly manner. He wears a soft navy cardigan, a corduroy newsboy cap, and
glasses that sometimes reflect the giant clocks he cares for, creating the
startling illusion that he has clocks for eyes.
One morning early last month, Mr. Schneider trundled up to the 1898 Clock Tower
Building, an official city landmark, a few blocks north of City Hall at Broadway
and Leonard Street, to wind its clock, as he has done nearly every week for 27
years.
The clock tower, which was designed by McKim, Mead & White to crown their
neo-Renaissance wedding cake of a building, is a neat emblem of the mix of
extravagance and public-mindedness that characterized the Gilded Age.
Tucked into the building’s 12 floors are municipal courts, parole officer
headquarters and, until a few years ago, P.S. 1’s Clocktower Gallery. During the
gallery’s 30-year sojourn in the upper stories, artists had their way with the
clock: One man rigged the lifeless hands to a motor that turned them at a
dizzying, mocking speed, and the artist Gordon Matta-Clark once suspended
himself from the clock face wearing a black raincoat, black tights and white
gloves to perform an elaborate, leisurely toilette with the aid of a garden
hose.
Post-9/11 security concerns forced the artists and their audience out of the
building, however, and the tower is now strictly off limits to visitors. But on
this rare occasion, Mr. Schneider had agreed to perform his duties in the
company of 20 observers, the happy few who had landed spots in an “Access
Restricted” tour sponsored by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.
The rickety steps of the two-story spiral staircase that snakes up to the tower,
and the drips and smells and feel of a place long unaccustomed to visitors, all
imparted a sense of adventure. But the clock tower itself was nothing short of
sublime, and there were gasps as the guests approached the landing.
Four massive clock faces, composed of frosted glass and cast-iron Roman
numerals, stare out over the four directions of Manhattan’s grid. From the
center of each face a delicate rod runs to the center of the room, where a
confounding jumble of gears, spindles, levers and paddles perches improbably
atop four cabriolet legs.
With more than a dozen gears, ranging in diameter from a half inch to two feet,
this is the city’s largest mechanical clock, and it is attached to a hammer that
hourly strikes a 5,000-pound brass bell. The clock keeps time in a manner
appropriate to the pace of the era that spawned it — that is, it’s off about 10
seconds a month, a lag unthinkable for today’s electronic devices that register
milliseconds with the self-importance of a nuclear countdown.
It takes a moment to read the giant hands’ reversed version of the time, a
moment during which you might notice that the four is represented as IIII
instead of IV, and another moment to remember that you are still in the 21st
century.
Although the machine dutifully, ceaselessly counts off the moments, time itself
seems to have stopped inside the tower. An impossibly elegant oil can cranes its
swanlike neck over leaded glass bottles from the 1930s. A bucket holds an odd
assortment of old clock hands. Down the spiral stairway, the pendulum’s giant
shadow sweeps a slow, stately path across a crumbling brick wall.
Mr. Schneider stood in the soft light suffused through the clock faces. His love
for the tower was palpable and contagious, and the city behind him appealingly
indistinct. Lulled by the clock’s mesmerizing motion and its hypnotic ticking,
you might imagine that a very different New York lay beyond the frosted faces.
“If you stand here and look out on the city, you can imagine you’re in an
entirely different century,” Mr. Schneider said. “If you want to do a little
time travel, this is the place to come.”
AMONG the dozen public clocks that fall within his purview — clocks in City
Hall, the old courthouse in Harlem, the old Sun Building, and the borough halls
of Brooklyn and Staten Island — this is his favorite, partly because it’s so
exquisite and partly because it was his first. For years in the late 1970s, Mr.
Schneider used to pass the clock on his way to his job in the city’s Human
Resources Administration, and it irked him that it wasn’t running.
“As a city employee, I took it personally,” he said. “A broken clock on a city
building reflected poorly on the city itself.”
So in 1979, with no experience to speak of, he persuaded a reluctant
administration to let him and a colleague named Eric Reiner have a go at
repairing it by assuring the administration that Mr. Reiner’s father was a
clockmaker. They neglected to mention that the man had been dead for 20 years.
Like much else in the city in the ’70s, the clock tower was in egregious
disrepair, having passed through two decades of neglect.
“There was a foot of garbage up here,” Mr. Schneider recalled. “A lot of the
parts were missing; junkies had sold them. The glass faces were broken, which
exposed the clock to all kinds of weather. Even the pigeons found the place
repugnant.”
After a year of trial-and-error tinkering, performed on a volunteer basis on
lunches and weekends, the men had the clock running, and Mr. Schneider soon
began eyeing other prominent timepieces. At first it was an amusing hobby, but
eventually the Dinkins administration recognized his dedication and named him
the city’s official clock master, a post long vacant. Nearly every Wednesday
morning since, Mr. Schneider has returned to the Clock Tower Building to raise
the two 800-pound weights whose slow descent powers the delicate, intricate
gears.
“When this was built, American clocks were the best in the world,” said Mr.
Schneider. “Even the Swiss copied our designs.”
The day of the tour, he interrupted his history lesson to warn that the clock
was about to strike. A second later the bell sounded its formidable reproof: 10
gongs, followed by an almost cartoonish whirring and clicking of the century-old
gears.
As Mr. Schneider replaced three of the 80 bulbs that illuminate the faces at
night, his solitary duties seemed to bear an uncanny resemblance to those of a
lighthouse keeper: his is an almost daily ritual of climbing, oiling and
polishing, all with the goal of maintaining a vital public signal — and a
warning — for unseen millions.
“Sometimes,” he said, “I’ll see people start to run when they hear the 9 o’clock
bells.”
Elizabeth Giddens is a former senior editor of Harper’s Magazine.
Time’s Guardian, NYT,
6.6.2007,
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/nyregion/thecity/03cloc.html
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