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Marine clocks or marine levers were a popular form that developed in the late 1800's in
order to have portable time. We've talked about most of the clocks so far that have
pendulums inside that swing. Obviously those wouldn't work very well if you're on a stagecoach
or a boat so the other way that clocks can tick is with what's called a balance wheel
where you'll see a wheel ticking back and forth and those don't require the clock to
stay in one position. This is an example of a Seth Thomas marine clock. These were often
also made in wooden cases, octagonal cases, square cases and they again could travel anywhere.
They were made by the big companies that we've talked about already. So if you see a small
ticking wall clock and you're looking for the pendulum you're probably not going to
find it. This is a movement from one of those early clocks. Lets see, this is actually a
Waterbury Clock Company movement. This probably came out of one of those octagonal wooden
cases of the time and you can see again there's our balance wheel taking the hair spring going
in and out that's pulling that balance wheel back and forth. So this could run in any position.
They weren't particularly accurate but they were also the precursors to alarm clocks that
we'll talk about in detail coming up in another series soon.