1715
The deadbeat escapement
George Graham removes the recoil at every tick. Accuracy goes from minutes a day to seconds.
San Diego County
Antique clocks, vintage speakers and estate glass
A consignment booth.
The premise
Nothing in this booth was made to be thrown away. A mantel clock from 1890 has a movement you can take out with two screws, clean with a brush, and put back, and it will keep time for another century. A speaker cabinet from 1962 has a crossover you can re-cap on a kitchen table. That is not nostalgia; it is how things were built before anything was glued shut.
Fig. I. Anchor escapement, English pattern
General reference, not a listing. The figures below describe a typical eight-day striking movement, not any one piece in the booth.
How an anchor escapement works
The escapement is the part that makes a clock a clock: it lets the gear train advance one tooth at a time, and it is the reason a wound weight becomes a measured second rather than a fast unwinding crash.
iRunning time on a full wind, eight-day movement8 days
iiTypical beat of a seconds pendulum1 per second
iiiParts in a striking movementover a hundred
ivParts that require electricitynone
The pallet faces are the two polished steel surfaces that take every impact the clock will ever make. Illustration only.
A short history
Clockmaking, 1700 to 1800
Almost everything a mantel clock does mechanically was settled in these hundred years. The pieces on the shelf are what that century handed down: the same escapement, the same going train, made later and made cheaper.
1726
The gridiron pendulum
Brass and steel rods set against one another so heat cannot lengthen the beat.
1761
Longitude, solved
Harrison's fourth timekeeper sails to Jamaica and returns seconds out. A machine fixes a problem astronomy could not.
1770s
The bracket clock matures
Striking and repeating work becomes standard domestic equipment rather than a commission.
1780s
Breguet's refinements
The going barrel and self-winding work; the vocabulary of fine clockmaking is essentially finished.
1798
The type on this page
Bodoni cuts the letterforms these headlines are set in. Caslon, in the body text, dates to 1722.
On the shelf
Currently in the booth
Inventory moves. What is listed here is what is physically on the shelf today, each piece with its own page and its own photographs.
Nothing is listed yet.
Visit
Where the booth is
The booth is inside a consignment store in San Diego County.
The booth's address is not on the site yet.
Ask about a piece