In today’s home designs, clocks are often used to express your style and taste in decoration. A wall clock can compliment your house décor and beautifies the walls of your room. There are clocks in all kind of shape, color, style, and many feature additional functions such as alarms and weather forecasters. There are the traditional clocks with hands and a numerical face, or a modern digital clock with sleek, contemporary styling. With so many options available, it’s not hard to find one that will fit with your needs.
The word clock was actually first used in the 14th century (about 700 years ago). It comes from the word for bell in Latin ("clocca"). The oldest type of clock is a sundial clock, also called a sun clock. They were first used around 3,500 B.C. (about 5,500 years ago). Sundials use the sun to tell the time. The shadow of the sun points to a number on a circular disk that shows you the time. And for centuries humans had shown amazing ability to keep accurate time in a functional, stylish device.
Mechanical Clock
Are clocks that are powered by mechanical means like spring, coiled spring or falling weights. The components are generally made from simple mechanical parts with its precision depends largely on the quality of its components. The original mechanical clocks appeared sometime in the 1300's. These clocks were large affairs often housed in churches and uses falling weights as power supplies. The early clock chimed a bell at given intervals instead of displaying time on a clock face.
In 1490 the coiled main spring was invented and was used as the power source for mechanical clocks. This invention enabled the creation of smaller clocks, like the mantel and desktop clocks. The mechanical clock accuracy was further improved in 1656 with the invention pendulum clock, which is accurate to within one minute per day.
Quartz Clock
The first quartz clock was built by in 1927 by W.A.Morrison, using a natural quartz crystal. Quartz clock uses the vibration of a quartz crystal to control the clock movement. This vibration is generated by passing electricity through a quartz crystal. This oscillation is called the piezoelectric effect.
As the quartz movement is inexpensive and highly accurate, it became the popular clock mechanisms for today’s clock.
Atomic Clock
Is the latest improvement on clock movement, it uses the frequency of absorpting and emitting of electromagnetic radiation of a compound as a mechanism by which to divide time. The oscillation is accurate to one second in 1.4 million years, making it the standard on measurement of time. The atomic clock is also durable as the atoms can oscillate forever without any distortions.
The original atomic clock was invented in 1955 by Dr L Esson and originally worked with the chemical Ammonia. Within a few years the atomic clock was based on the Cesium-133 atom and in 1967 the second was defined as 9,192,631,770 oscillations of the Cesium atoms resonant frequency. The atomic clock is an expensive piece of scientific equipment that only used in laboratories and standards organizations.
We hope this article has helped you gain a better understanding on clocks and it’s working mechanism.
