Unpublished paper, 'Description of the electro-magnetic clock' by Charles Wheatstone

Description

Wheatstone describes plans for a clock which would be able to indicate exactly the same time in as many different places, distant from each other, as may be required. The electromagnetic clock consists of a face with its second, minute and hour hands, and of a train of wheels which communicate motion from the arbor of the second’s hand to that of the hour hand, in the same manner as in an ordinary clock train. A small electromagnet is caused to act upon a peculiarly constructed wheel placed on the second’s arbor, in such manner that whenever the temporary magnetism is either produced or destroyed, the wheel, and consequently the second’s hand, advances a sixtieth part of its revolution.

Annotations in ink throughout.

Subject: Physics / Electromagnetism

Received 26 November 1840. Read 26 November 1840. Withdrawn 13 May 1841.

Whilst the Royal Society declined to publish this paper in full, and the paper was withdrawn, an abstract of the paper was published in volume 4 of Abstracts of the Papers Printed in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London [later Proceedings of the Royal Society] as 'Description of the electro-magnetic clock'.

Reference number

AP/23/43

Earliest possible date

November 1840

Physical description

Ink on paper

Page extent

8 pages

Format

Manuscript