Few words about grandfather clocks.
Grandfather clocks have sort of timeless uniqueness to them. They tell us about the times of the past as they stand calmly in the room.
The song that named these clocks?
The song “My Grandfather’s Clock” was inspiration for the name. A clock in George Hotel in Piercebridge, County Durham, England gave birth to this song. Brothers called Jenkins worked there as managers. When one of the brothers died the clock started to lose time and wasn’t repairable anymore. The other brother died when he was ninety and with that the clock stopped working and was never repaired. H.C. Work wrote the song about it in 1876 and that’s where the term ‘grandfather clock’ originates from there.
What kind of grandfather clocks are there?
There are several different sizes of tehse clocks in average from six to eight feet (1.8-2.4 m) tall and because of the difference in size, you sometimes might come across terms like granddaughter clock – the ones that are smaller than 5 feet (1.5 m), grandmother clock – over 5 feet (1.5 m) and the clocks over 6 feet (1.8 m) are grandfathers.
There are two main types of grandfather clocks: 30-hour clocks and 8 day clocks. Those hours or days marked the time after which the clock had to be wound again. Eight day clocks were generally more expensive ones and were normally driven by two weights – one for pendulum and other for striking mechanism. 30-hour clocks, however, had only one weight for both mechanisms.
About chiming.
Nowadays, most of the clocks have both hourly and quarter-hourly chime sequences, playing every full hour and after every 15 minutes respectively.
How to pick a grandfather clock?
Buying a grandfather clock is not just buying another clock to tell the time in living room. There are few things, that you need to think of when you buy a grandfather clock. One important thing is space. They take a lot of space. You need to know that the clock you are buying actually fits to the room you want to put it. You need to know how much space do you have for that clock and you need to pay attention to the measurements of
the clock you are buying. Another thing that matters is the look of the clock and the style of your home – they should match. Also, grandfather clock is a big investment and you should look at it in the long term. This clock is a personal thing, it comes to your home.
