igOO Transactions of the American Institute 



day. The counection between the dials and movement is a four- 

 inch tin pipe. Instead of putting the dial woilvs at the dials he 

 put them in the center of the tower, and run a four-inch tin pipe to 

 each hour hand, and a three-inch one inside to the minute hands, 

 with a band of friction rollers between them. The dials are eio^ht 

 feet. There is power enough on this movement, if properly made, 

 to carry four twenty feet dials, but it is so used up in bad pitches, 

 large bearings, heavy wheels, and friction generally, that it is only 

 by constant nursing that it keeps moving. Thanks to a long, heavy 

 pendulum, it does keep very fair time, and has run for months 

 during the past summer without any alteration, and its greatest 

 variation has seldom been more than ten or fifteen seconds in a 

 week, and sometimes banking on the wheel at that. The weights 

 I judge to be about eight, twelve, and fifteen hundred pounds, and 

 drop fifty feet. A large box is placed at the bottom of the wells 

 that holds about a bale of cotton waste, so that if a cord should 

 break, the cotton would check the blow. Two years since I wound 

 it on Saturday, and on Sunday morning the chiming cord broke, 

 and the weight of 1,500 pounds dropping fifty feet made the splin- 

 ters fly in all directions. The cotton box was strongly braced on 

 all sides, but it spread open and at the same time the weight box 

 burst and spilled its contents, otherwise there might have been an 

 extra weight on the organ bellows which are in line below. Sand 

 boxes break the force of a falling weight better than anj'thing I 

 know. This clock bears the name of "James Rogers, 1846." The 

 clocks we have visited are all English. But you say three of them 

 were built here. So they were, and so do Englishmen brew their 

 ale here, and English women make their plum-puddings here, and 

 though it is not at all like that they 'ave at 'ome, it is English for 

 all that. When an Englishman builds a clock he must have pon- 

 derous heavy main wheels and barrels. No matter how fine he may 

 run up his train, these must be massive, weighty. A clock could 

 be built to do all and better service that Trinity does, from the 

 metal in the frame and main wheels. The pinions are all made 

 from the good old English rule, that the circumference of a twelve- 

 leaf leading pinion must equal fourteen teeth on the wheel. The 

 tooth strikes entirely too soon, some of them so much so that unless 

 kept oiled they will not slide into mesh, and I defy any man to 

 make a tower clock keep time with oiled pinions. On the other 

 hand, the driving pinions, which should be in proportion larger, 

 are made smaller, and in some of the winding jacks the leaf strikes 



