Clocktime: John Knibb's Miniature Lantern Clock 1669, 01 Introduction

John Knibb - Miniature lantern clock, hour-striking alarm, signed ‘Johannes Knibb Oxon fecit 1669’.
Join Dr John C Taylor OBE from the Clocktime digital museum in this introduction to the Miniature Lantern Clock, dated 1669.
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This miniature brass lantern clock is beautifully conceived and skilfully produced. The three tall frets of cross dolphin tails surrounded by delicate flower heads extend up above the top of the pillars and below the skirt of the bell. The base of the front finial is engraved Johannes Knibb Oxon fecit 1669. The dial centre is engraved with flower heads in scrolls surrounding the little Tudor rose engraved alarm disc. With six tiny setting hands outboard of the six even numbers, the alarm time is set against the opposite end of the simple double-bowed hour hand. Most unusually, John designed and constructed this miniature lantern clock with three trains. To the front, the going train with a vertical verge arbor escapement controlled by the short bob pendulum powered by a fixed pulley of the Huygens' endless cord weight, which also supplies the Huygens' maintaining power during winding. The hour train is controlled by a countwheel, mounted on the rear side of the brass back movement plate but inside the rear iron back plate powered by the click side of the Huygens' endless cord weight. The alarm train is in between the movement plates, driven from a driving weight from a central rope, in the tapered drive wheel, outside the back plate, to sound the alarm on the hour bell. I like to imagine John Knibb waking up every morning to his alarm as his alarm went off. A pleasant link back over 350 years and here it is today still performing the same function.