Clock tower

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For other uses, see Clock Tower (disambiguation).
A clock tower in Erbil

Clock towers are a specific type of structure that house a turret clock and have one or more clock faces on the upper exterior walls. Many clock towers are freestanding structures but they can also adjoin or be located on top of another building. Some other buildings also have clock faces on their exterior but these structures serve other main functions.

Clock towers are a common sight in many parts of the world with some being iconic buildings. One example is the

Elizabeth Tower in London (usually called "Big Ben
", although strictly this name belongs only to the bell inside the tower).

Definition

Sarajevo Clock Tower
A clock tower in the Helsinki Central Station

There are many

towers. A clock tower historically fits this definition of a tower and therefore can be defined as any tower specifically built with one or more (often four) clock faces and that can be either freestanding or part of a church or municipal building such as a town hall
. Not all clocks on buildings therefore make the building into a clock tower.

The mechanism inside the tower is known as a

Bell towers
and then had clocks added to them. As these structures fulfil the definition of a tower they can be considered to be clock towers.

History

Presumably the first depiction of a medieval central European clock tower (without the actual turret clock) in the 13th century by Villard de Honnecourt, entitled: "cest li masons don orologe" ("this is the house of a clock")

Although clock towers are today mostly admired for their aesthetics, they once served an important purpose. Before the middle of the twentieth century, most people did not have watches, and prior to the 18th century even home clocks were rare. The first clocks did not have faces, but were solely striking clocks, which sounded bells to call the surrounding community to work or to prayer. They were therefore placed in towers so the bells would be audible for a long distance. Clock towers were placed near the centres of towns and were often the tallest structures there. As clock towers became more common, the designers realized that a dial on the outside of the tower would allow the townspeople to read the time whenever they wanted.

Roman Greece
Clock Tower, Mandi, Himachal Pradesh, India

The use of clock towers dates back to

Acropolis.[1]

In

St. Albans, in 1326, 'showed various astronomical phenomena'.[3]

day and night daily in order to account for the changing lengths of day and night throughout the year, and it also featured five robotic musicians who automatically play music when moved by levers operated by a hidden camshaft attached to a water wheel. Other components of the castle clock included a main reservoir with a float, a float chamber and flow regulator, plate and valve trough, two pulleys, crescent disc displaying the zodiac, and two falcon automata dropping balls into vases.[7] Al-Jazari's castle clock is considered to be one of the earliest programmable analog computer, along with the ancient Greek's Antikythera mechanism.[8]

Line (mains) synchronous tower clocks were introduced in the United States in the 1920s.

Landmarks

Big Ben is the common name for the Elizabeth Tower at the north end (right) of the Palace of Westminster in London

Some clock towers have become famous landmarks. Prominent examples include

Moscow Kremlin, the Torre dell'Orologio in the Piazza San Marco in Venice, Italy, the Peace Tower of the Parliament of Canada in Ottawa, and the Zytglogge clock tower in the Old City of Bern, Switzerland
.

Records

Old Joe in Birmingham, England – the tallest freestanding clock tower in the world

The tallest freestanding clock tower in the world is the

topped out and the building partially occupied,[12][13]
until 1908.

Taller buildings have had clock faces added to their existing structure such as the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, with a clock added in 2000. The building has a roof height of 187.68 m (615.7 ft), and an antenna height of 237 m (778 ft). The NTT Docomo Yoyogi Building in Tokyo, with a clock added in 2002, has a roof height of 240 m (790 ft), and an antenna height of 272 m (892 ft).

The

Abraj Al Bait, a hotel complex in Mecca constructed in 2012, has the largest and highest clock face on a building in the world, with its Makkah Royal Clock Tower having an occupied height of 494.4 m (1,622 ft), and a tip height of 601 m (1,972 ft).[14] The tower has four clock faces, two of which are 43 m (141 ft) in diameter, at about 400 m (1,300 ft) high.[15]

See also

References

  1. ^ Joseph V. Noble; Derek J. de Solla Price: The Water Clock in the Tower of the Winds, American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 72, No. 4 (1968), pp. 345-355 (353)
  2. ^ Bodde, Derk (1991), Chinese Thought, Society, and Science, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, p. 140.
  3. ^ a b c Clocks, Encyclopædia Britannica 5, 835 (1951).
  4. ^ Frederick Tupper, Jr., 'Anglo-Saxon Dæg-Mæl', Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, Vol. 10, No. 2 (1895), p. 130, citing Archæologia, v, 416.
  5. ISBN 0-292-78149-0
    .
  6. Donald Routledge Hill, Mechanical Engineering Archived December 25, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
    )
  7. ^ Salim Al-Hassani (13 March 2008). "How it Works: Mechanism of the Castle Clock". FSTC. Archived from the original on 10 August 2009. Retrieved 2008-09-06.
  8. History
    , retrieved 6 September 2008
  9. ^ "UK Parliament - Big Ben". Retrieved 2009-10-27.
  10. ^ "Joseph Chamberlain Memorial Clock Tower". Skyscraper News. Archived from the original on 1 July 2018. Retrieved 15 April 2014.
  11. ^ "National Register of Historic Places Inventory - Nomination Form". (archive) National Park Service. page 10. Retrieved November 9, 2017. "The statue was … hoisted to the top of the tower in fourteen sections in 1894."
  12. ^ ""History of City Hall: 1886-1890". (archive) Retrieved November 9, 2017. "1889: Mayor Fitler moves into completed offices on west side."
  13. ^ "History of City Hall: 1891-1901". (archive) Retrieved November 9, 2017. "1891: State Supreme Court opens in permanent courtroom."
  14. ^ "Makkah Royal Clock Tower ". skyscrapercenter.com. Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. Retrieved May 20, 2018.
  15. ^ "Dokaae Tower Clock And Crescent" Archived 2012-03-04 at the Wayback Machine. pct.ae. Premier Composite Technologies. Retrieved May 21, 2018.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Clock towers.
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