6 5 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



a more wonderful piece of mechanism than the clock that we have just 

 described. It is very much smaller than the Hazleton clock, and read- 

 ily stands in the corner of an editor's office in Philadelphia. This 

 editor — who controls one of the leading papers in that city — has more 

 than fifty clocks, many of them very rare and costly, but the Ritten- 

 house is superior to all the rest. It was made in 1767 by David Rit- 

 tenhouse, after whom Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia is named. 

 The clock has six dials. On the main dial in the center there are four 

 hands, which point out the seconds, minutes, hours, and days — the lat- 

 ter giving one day more to February in leap-year. The phases of the 

 moon are also given. The second dial shows the movements of the 

 planets about the sun — each planet being represented by a golden 

 ball. The third dial shows the moon revolving about the earth. The 

 fourth dial shows how Saturn is getting along in his twenty-nine-year 

 journey around the sun. The fifth dial shows whether the sun-time 

 is fast or slow in comparison with mean meridian-time. The sixth dial 

 discloses a combination of chimes which sound the quarter-hours, a 

 choice of the tune to be played being had by turning a hand to any 

 one of ten numbers, and a repetition of the tune is caused by pressing 

 on a knob upon the dial. 



A great many people nowadays appear to have taken a fancy to 

 the tall clocks that ai'e intended to stand in the corner of a room. 

 They are sometimes called " grandfather's clocks " ; and a great vari- 

 ety of them may be found all through the New England States, but 

 more especially in Salem, Massachusetts, and Newport, Rhode Island. 

 A number of English clocks from Virginia have recently come into 

 the possession of the dwellers in Newport in a roundabout Avay. It 

 seems that during the war of 1861 the negroes frequently stole the tall 

 clocks and took them to their cabins. But, as the ceilings of the cab- 

 ins were so very low, the clock-cases had to be sawed off, both at the 

 top and at the bottom. Several years afterward a live Yankee came 

 along and bought a great many of the shortened clocks, took them 

 home, repaired them, and sold them at very high prices. Of course, 

 all of these clocks give the old, new, and full moon, the tides, etc., 

 and occasionally one of them has a music-box. A good story is told 

 of a lady who drove a long distance into New Jersey to buy an old 

 clock that would play tunes. Having brought it home, she found that 

 it needed repairing badly ; and so she took it to a repairer of clocks. 

 Now, this repairer did not know how important it was, in the mind 

 of the lady, to have the clock play very old tunes. Therefore, when he 

 saw that the musical-box part of the clock must be replaced with some- 

 thing else, he put in a cylinder that contained several modern tunes. 

 When the clock had been repaired it was sent home. The lady called 

 in her friends to congratulate her upon her purchase. All of the vis- 

 itors waited eagerly for the old tunes to be played ; but, instead of that 

 kind of music, the machinery struck up " The Babies on our Block " .' 



