An English great wheel skeleton timepiece
An English great wheel skeleton timepiece

MURDAY/THE REASON MFG CO. LTD.; CIRCA 1915

Details
An English great wheel skeleton timepiece
Murday/The Reason MFG Co. Ltd.; circa 1915
The glass dial with back-painted Roman chapters and blued steel hands, the movement visible in the centre and behind the glass supported on two slender columns centred by a large steel balance wheel with blued steel hairspring, the magnetic horseshoe bar revolving at either end of a large magnet, the balance carrying a Hipp Toggle with the notched receiver supported on a long steel spring giving impulse to the balance wheel, the brass circular base with signature plaque engraved Electric Clock Made by the Reason MFG Co. Ltd. Brighton Murday's Patent, on circular moulded mahogany base; glass dome
13¾ ins. 35 cm. high

Lot Essay

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
Charles K. Aked, Electrifying Time, catalogue of an exhibition held at the Science Museum, 15 December 1976 - 11 April 1977, A.H.S., Ticehurst, 1976
Alan & Rita Shenton, Collectable Clocks, Woodbridge, 1987, chapter XIII, p. 375, gig. 414
Murday took out his patent for his Electrically Driven Balance Wheel Clock in 1910 and it was the best known and most successful application of the Hipp Toggle principle to the balance wheel control of clocks. The propulsion system was utilised from his earlier pendulum clocks with modifications for the balance wheel. The balance wheel swings about twenty times before the toggle is acted on and each minute it oscillates fifteen times. Only about 300 were apparently made of which the glass dial versions are the the most scarce. This limited survival and their fascinating aesthetic appearance have made them particularly well known in the field of electrical horology.

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