Japanese house clock with graduated scale combined on single plate

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Japanese house clock
Manufacturer	(unknown)
Production years	(unknown)
Production location	Japan

With this clock, the time is indicated by the height of the driving weight, which carries an index moving over a graduated scale. In this clock, however, the scales for all the months of the year are combined upon a single plate, and the index connected with the weight is movable horizontally across its bar so as to bring it opposite to the scale of hours for the appropriate month.

[edit] How it works

The variation in length of the Japanese day and night ‘hours’ is well shown by this plate. It will be seen that in midwinter the day and night ‘hours’ are of almost equal length, while in midsummer the day hours are some two and a third times as long as the night hours. It must therefore have been customary to count a considerable period of twilight at each end of the day as belonging to the day, so that in midwinter ‘day’ and ‘night’ would each last for some 12 European hours and ‘night’ a little over seven.

[edit] Memories

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[edit] In the Science Museum's Records

Inv. No: 1928-721