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Taken for this week's Macro Mondays theme 'Timepieces'. The face of this small carriage clock is about 4 " in diameter. I liked the way that using a light source at the side threw the shadows of the hands across the face.
Built between the 11th and 18th centuries, the Old Town, the Lesser Town and the New Town speak of the great architectural and cultural influence enjoyed by this city since the Middle Ages. The many magnificent monuments, such as Hradcani Castle, St Vitus Cathedral, Charles Bridge and numerous churches and palaces, built mostly in the 14th century under the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles IV.
Historical Centre of Prague, Czech Republic
August 28, 2007
UNESCO World Heritage Site # 616
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The Prague Astronomical Clock or Prague Orloj is a medieval astronomical clock attached to the Old Town Hall in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic.
The clock was first installed in 1410, making it the third-oldest astronomical clock in the world and the oldest clock still in operation.
The Orloj is mounted on the southern wall of Old Town Hall in the Old Town Square. The clock mechanism has three main components — the astronomical dial, representing the position of the Sun and Moon in the sky and displaying various astronomical details; statues of various Catholic saints stand on either side of the clock; "The Walk of the Apostles", an hourly show of moving Apostle figures and other sculptures, notably a figure of a skeleton that represents Death, striking the time; and a calendar dial with medallions representing the months. According to local legend, the city will suffer if the clock is neglected and its good operation is placed in jeopardy; a ghost, mounted on the clock, was supposed to nod its head in confirmation. According to the legend, the only hope was represented by a boy born on New Year's night.
The oldest part of the Orloj, the mechanical clock and astronomical dial, dates back to 1410, when it was created by clockmaker Mikuláš of Kadaň and Charles University professor of mathematics and astronomy Jan Šindel. The first recorded mention of the clock was on 9 October 1410. Later, presumably around 1490, the calendar dial was added and the clock facade was decorated with gothic sculptures.
Formerly, it was believed that the Orloj was constructed in 1490 by clockmaster Jan Růže (also called Hanuš); this is now known to be a historical mistake. A legend, recounted by Alois Jirásek, has it that the clockmaker Hanuš was blinded on the order of the Prague Councillors so that he could not repeat his work; in turn, he disabled the clock, and no one was able to repair it for the next hundred years.
In 1552 it was repaired by Jan Táborský (1500–1572), master clockmaker of Klokotská Hora, who also wrote a report of the clock where he mentioned Hanuš as the maker of this clock. This mistake, corrected by Zdeněk Horský, was due to an incorrect interpretation of records from the period. The mistaken assumption that Hanuš was the maker is probably connected with his reconstruction of the Old Town Hall in the years 1470–1473. The clock stopped working many times in the centuries after 1552, and was repaired many times. The legend was used as the main plot in the animated movie Goat story — The Old Prague Legends.
In 1629 or 1659 wooden statues were added, and figures of the Apostles were added after a major repair in 1787–1791. During the next major repair in the years 1865–1866 the golden figure of a crowing rooster was added.
The Orloj suffered heavy damage on 7 and especially 8 May 1945, during the Prague uprising, when the Nazis fired on the south-west side of the Old Town Square from several armoured vehicles in an unsuccessful attempt to destroy one of the centers of the uprising. The hall and nearby buildings burned, along with the wooden sculptures on the clock and the calendar dial face made by Josef Mánes. After significant effort, the machinery was repaired, the wooden Apostles restored by Vojtěch Sucharda, and the Orloj started working again in 1948.
The Orloj was renovated in autumn 2005, when the statues and the lower calendar ring were restored. The wooden statues were covered with a net to keep pigeons away.
The last renovation of the astronomical clock was carried out from January to September 2018, following a reconstruction of the Old Town Tower. During the renovation, an electric clock mechanism that had been in operation since 1948 was replaced by an original mechanism from the 1860s.
On 9 October 2010, the Orloj's 600th anniversary was celebrated with a light show on the face of the clock tower. Two projectors were used to project several animated videos on the clock. The videos showed it being built, torn down, rebuilt, and peeled away to show its internal mechanisms and the famous animated figures, as well as various events in the clock's history. The video interacted with the tower's architecture, such as rain rolling off the arch, and showing the passage of time with moving shadows.
605th anniversary
On its 605th anniversary, 9 October 2015, the Orloj appeared on the Google home page as a Google Doodle.
The Orloj was taken down for reconstruction and replaced by a LED screen in early 2018, with the restoration works scheduled to last for the whole summer tourist season of 2018 and the restored actual Orloj eventually being back in service soon enough to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Czechoslovakia at the end of October 2018. With the reconstruction and restoration work completed, it resumed operations at 6 p.m. local time on 28 September 2018.
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Teleport - maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/No%20Comment/160/37/22
I was in Gloucester the other day when I spotted this pretty clock at the top of the Debenhams building. I thought it was perfect for the 'hands' topic in my scavenger hunt 113 pictures in 2013.
#72 Hand(s) in 113 pictures in 2013
Early morning at Ulverston. The clock tower dominates the 1873 built station.
156425 & 475 approach with the 2C47 0823 Lancaster to Barrow-in-Furness. Notably 2C47 was one of the class 37 workings when the loco hauled services ran south of Barrow.
11th January 2019.
© Stephen Veitch - All rights reserved. Please do not use my images without permission.
The astronomical clock of Besançon is housed in Besançon Cathedral. Besançon's present astronomical clock, made in 1860 by Auguste-Lucien Vérité fr:Auguste-Lucien Vérité of Beauvais to replace an earlier and unsatisfactory one made by Bernardin in the 1850s, differs from those in Strasbourg, Lyon and Beauvais. The clock is meant to express the theological concept that each second of the day the Resurrection of Christ transforms the existence of man and of the world.
The clock stands 5.8 meters high and 2.5 meters wide, and has 30,000 mechanical parts. It sits in its own room in the clocktower. Verite's coat of arms, those of Cardinal Mathieu, and of the cathedral appear on the front of the clock.
Seventy dials provide 122 indications. These include the seconds, hours, days and years. The clock is a perpetual one that can register up to 10,000 years, including adjustments for leap year cycles. The clock also indicates the times of sunrise and sunset.
Twenty-one automated figures either ring the quarter-hour and the hour, or perform the Resurrection of Christ at noon, and his burial at 3 pm.
The clock also has animated pictures of seven different French harbours and indicates the hours and height of the tides there on dials. One of the harbours is Saint-Pierre, Martinique; another is Cayenne, French Guiana. There is an eighth animated picture, this one of Saint Helena, where the former emperor Napoleon died in exile.
An orrery (planetarium) is part of the clock and it shows the motions and orbits of the planets. The planetary motions are congruent with those of the actual planets so that the planetarium reproduces eclipses as they occur.
The central part of the main body of the clock has 12 dials for parts of the civil calendar, and five for the liturgical calendars The dials showing the civil calendar show the month, date, day, the solar element that gave its name to the day of the week (e.g., the sun for Sunday), the season, the sign of the Zodiac, the length of the day, the length of the night, the seconds, and the times for sunrise and sunset. One dial gives the date of Easter, and this acts as the driver for dials that present the date for five key days of the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar.
Two columns have 10 dials each. The bottom eight dials show the time in different major cities around the world, including New York and San Francisco, though without adjustment for daylight savings time. The two top dials on the left column show the number of solar and lunar eclipses in the current year. The two dials on the right column show the leap years and leap centuries. The hand on the leap century dial moved for the first time in 2000; it will move for the second time in 2400.
A pyramidal arrangement of figures caps the clock. The 12 apostles form the base; two different apostles come out each hour to strike the hour. Also, every hour the three virtues, Faith, Hope, and Charity, move, with Faith showing the chalice to Charity and Hope, which stand to her right and left. Above them the statues of the archangels Michael and Gabriel strike the quarter-hours.
At the top of the clock, at midday, Christ arises from his tomb, and at the 3p.m. he returns to it. When he arises, Mary, his mother and Queen of the world, raises her sceptre; she lowers it when he returns to his tomb.
Through a system of universal joints extending some 100 meters, the clock drives four dials that sit on the four sides of the cathedral's tower, thus providing the time of day to the city. A fifth dial is inside the cathedral. The outside dials also show, respectively, the season, the day of the week, and the month of the year. Cables from the clock activate bells in the tower that sound the quarter hour and the hour.
Eleven different descending weights drive the clock. Three of the weights need to be reset each day.