North Coast Imports, Inc.

Here's a nice find on YouTube... from the description: Implementation and early development of a fully detached, gravity impulsed, mechanical escapement inspired by the designs of James Arnfield. Prototype built for kinematic amusement with the possibility of satisfactory timekeeping. The pendulum should at no time be connected directly to the going train and only impulsed by a falling tumbler which, after leaving contact with the pendulum, releases the escapement.  If you know more about this, I'd love to hear from you. Looks fascinating.

Here's a great video. Beautiful clock! A description of an E. Howard and Co. Clock Tower Clock (anchor escapement) and how it functions by breaking down the mechanism into 4 categories and explaining each section. The clock is at the First Congregational Church in Williamstown, MA.

We, at North Coast Imports are very pleased to introduce the NEW Brettluhr! A  Brettluhr  is a "Little Board Clock."  It was a clock that mostly existed in Vienna in the first half of the  Nineteenth Century.  ( Here  and here are original Brettluhr  clocks.)  It appeared in many styles and configurations, but Brettluhren  commonly consisted of a board with a movement mounted to it.  Usually the board didn't have any sides or door which encased the movement. For our version, we decided to use a mechanism which showed off the beauty of the gears.  This "Skeleton" style movement is made in Germany.  It is, of course, made with the best quality materials and according to a time-tested design.  It is a single-train movement with a drop-off bell strike.  In other words, it strikes the sonorous bell once as the minute hand passes the hour. The clock is powered by the pull of gravity on the weight.  By the e...

I love Dug North's Blog . In case you don't already follow it, here are some noteworthy recent posts - for lovers of clocks and mechanical automata. Here's a beautiful and artistic piece from Levi van Veluw An analog clock in a digital world : This eye-boggling piece was recently featured in Clocks Magazine . Another book for your library... The mechanical clock, at least in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, with its rational design and regular running, demonstrated an orderliness lacking in almost every aspect of life at that time. The clock came to offer an explanation for the mysterious workings of the cosmos: living creatures were in fact automata, and the universe itself was an enormous clockwork... Another great clockwork sculpture: There is truly some fascinating and beautiful stuff out there.  Follow this blog and Dug's blog for constant updates on the world of clockwork art!

Dug North has a writeup on the Musical Mystery House in Wiscasset, Maine   It's an old video, but it features some whistling automata like the bird cage, bird box and whistling man that are available through North Coast Imports! Address for the Musical Mystery House: Musical Wonder House 16-18 High Street Wiscasset, ME 04578 Hours: Memorial Day Weekend through Halloween Monday through Saturday, from 10AM - 5PM and Sunday Noon - 5 PM Web site: http://www.musicalwonderhouse.com/

Here's a really interesting piece, again from Dug North's inestimable blog . The monkey is shaving!  It's really a complicated movement, similar to a Black Forest dumpling eater ( or rat eater ) but more colorful.  I wish there were pictures of the clock too!

We're about to introduce an exciting NEW model.  Stay tuned for more info.  AND HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND! SOLID walnut board, made in the U.S.A. with German mechanism.  We're really excited to introduce this new model from Sternreiter.

It turns out there is an antique replica  (PDF) in Sydney ! Made in 1887. [via Kugelbahn ]

There's a fantastic article in the New York Times about the Morris Museum in New Jersey .  A musicologist draws connections between an 1877 Swiss music box there with Puccini's Madam Butterfly. Even now few visitors spend much time in the room where the Swiss music boxes are displayed. Yet, being a musicologist, I lingered there alone last January as my children ran ahead. I kept listening to one box in particular, a harmoniphone from around 1877, equipped with a reed organ and able to play six Chinese tunes from a cylinder.   Confused at first, I suddenly realized that I had stumbled on the key to a musicological mystery many decades old. Scholars have long known that Puccini used Chinese tunes in his  opera  “Turandot” (set in China and left incomplete on Puccini’s death in 1924). But they have been puzzled by the origins of two “Japanese” tunes in his “Madama Butterfly” (set in Japan and first performed in 1904). What I had found were Chinese sour...

Have a great weekend!!

We'll have a leap second at the end of this month. The last minute will have 61 seconds. But, not without controversy: From  Cosmos Magazine : The leap second has long caused debate among member countries of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), with some arguing for it to be abolished in favour of the exclusive use of atomic time. Every time a second is added, the world's computers need to be manually adjusted, a costly practice that also boosts the risk of error. High-precision systems such as satellites and some data networks will have to factor in the leap second or risk provoking a calculation catastrophe. [via io9.com ]

Here's a nice article about our friend Justin and his NEW BOOK! From the article: Collectors Weekly : Was Johann Baptist Beha a well-known clockmaker? Miller : Yes, he’s definitely the most prominent cuckoo clockmaker in the Black Forest, and his clocks are collected aggressively. His clocks are usually regarded as the pinnacle of cuckoo clock making, whether deservedly or not. If you look at Black Forest clocks as a whole, a lot of them were very cheaply done. They were made for middle- or lower middle-class customers, and most manufacturers were competing with each other, racing to have the lowest price. And how do you lower price? Well, you cut quality and you cut costs. One of Miller's most exotic clocks is a cuckoo with a three-train movement and a life-size bird perched on top, designed by Johann Baptist Beha around 1880. But Beha basically said, “We’re not going to race to the bottom. We’re going to make clocks of high quality for people who can afford them...

We've been watching the restoration and re-installation of our founder Karl Schleutermann's giant cuckoo clock in Sugarcreek, Ohio. Sugarcreek Mayor Clayton Wellery, left, and Freeman Mullet line up the clock house of the large cuckoo clock that is being set in the intersection of Main and Broadway Streets in Sugarcreek on Wednesday, May 30, 3012. The wooden clock measures more than 23 feet tall, 24 feet wide and 13 feet deep, and is one of the world's largest cuckoo clocks. (AP Photo/The Times Reporter, Jim Cummings) Read more: http://www.kitsapsun.com/photos/2012/may/31/301088/#ixzz1ww9AWtYJ

Here's a bit of fun, a joke on time standards ...

Regular followers of this blog know that I like to repost movies and descriptions of old mechanical automata.  There's a nice little collection of reposted videos over at io9 that's worth checking out.

We have no interests in Lowe's, but how can I not re-post this commercial?

Our supplier Ingolf Haas of Rombach und Haas has a nice interview about the current state of the Cuckoo Clock industry here.

This is a phrase we hear all the time from people who love weight-driven clocks (like cuckoo clocks!) but are concerned that their young child or pets might get a hold of the chain or weight and pull the clock down. It is surely a concern.  We know that it can be nearly impossible to child-proof or pet-proof a modern home, without even considering adding a timepiece. But consider this: There is nothing quite so personal, or thoughtful, as a gift of a clock to a young child.  It's something that the child will grow up with his or her entire life.  They might even regard a clock as an old friend or at least a remembrance of your love and care.  There are very few gifts which actually last a lifetime.  A mechanical clock is one of those things. While the child is small, don't worry about needing to keep the clock running all the time.  Sometimes they might just like to see it run now and then... possibly they might enjoy the soothing tick-tock sound whil...

Here's an interesting piece. Via Dug North . The gilded robed goddess standing atop the marble base has her arms outstretched. The hand of her right arm points to the hour, and the left hand points to the minutes, which are delineated in 5-minute increments. The gilding contrasts most beautifully with the blue enameled backdrop behind the goddess. The platform escapement movement works perfectly, translating the clockworks through a clever linkage to the two arms, which when they reach their uppermost point fall dramatically to the lower starting position.

Meet Bret Thorne, a kinetic sculpturer that makes fantastic clockwork creations! Go to his website and check out some videos and fascinating descriptions. Including this one... The most primitive computer is comprised of only two parts and from these two parts we can create all others. Those two parts are memory and a comparator. Some may claim that any practical computer must also have input and output, but that just is memory, or registers, memory again, or an ALU, nope that's a comparator.  We can further delineate memory into two types, read-only and read-write. We need the read-write type of memory to store temporary values for comparison. For example, read-write memory could be a toggle or counter. Read-only memory is convenient for storing tables or a program, however these two examples are symbolic and not necessary for computation. An example of read-only memory is pegs in a disc, where the presents of a peg represents a symbol. The true heart of a compute...

We are making quicker updates on Twitter that don't make it to our regular blog. Please make sure you are following our Twitter feed too. There are lots of cool updates, like pictures of NEW models being designed in our workshop...   You can see this feed at www.twitter.com/ncimports and the RSS feed for that is:  http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=ncimports ...And Facebook too! We've got pictures and info and updates on Facebook. Like us at www.Facebook.com/northcoastimports Our Twitter and Facebook updates are also posted to the right on this blog page ->

Cuckoo clocks should be seen in more places, after all.

Wow! Check out this fantastic video from 1976.  It features ex-spy and ex-instrument and automata repairman David Secrett, now automata creator.  My next step is to start watching auctions for works by this master craftsman.  Check out the fantastic complexity! [Via the Automata Blog . As usual, our friend Dug North never fails to find impressive stuff!]

There's a beautiful picture of a warehouse of antiques in the latest Restoration Hardware catalog, featuring some nice Morbiers in various states.  RH is focusing on "deconstructed" furniture with a French Provincial, rustic, and somewhat industrial influences.  They get it! They understand how these beautiful works fit perfectly in a modern environment. You can't get an original hand made Morbier clock from Restoration Hardware, but you can from North Coast Imports!  Email us today for more info...

From ScienceDaily (Mar. 8, 2012) : A proposed new time-keeping system tied to the orbiting of a neutron around an atomic nucleus could have such unprecedented accuracy that it neither gains nor loses 1/20th of a second in 14 billion years -- the age of the Universe. New technology may produce a clock 100 times more accurate than the best current Atomic clocks. [photo: NASA]

Here's another snapshot from our workshop. Stay tuned for exciting new models from North Coast Imports and Sternreiter!

Here's an interesting interface designed by programmer Trammell Hudson of NYC Resistor. He's got all kinds of new designs for his hackable watch on his Flickr feed. It's great to see all of the new ideas for horology coming from such a wide pool of expertise. Via Makezine : Trammell Hudson of NYC Resistor designed an interface a day for his hackable inPulse watch. He has a lot of great ones but I really like his Conway’s Game of Life interface from Day 24. Today I had to work late, so the watch is not really finished. It borrows the game of life code from a previous watch and tries to work the time display into the game grid. Perhaps with a better font this would have worked better; maybe make the 7 into a glider and have some other interesting shapes in the characters.

We're busy working on designing and building exciting new clockwork dreams! So much work done and so much still to do. I can hardly take a moment to put out this blog post, but you will be very pleased with the new horological pieces we will be introducing with our new 2012 collection. As usual, stay tuned, watch this space and check out our website, Twitter feed, and Facebook.

Great article in The NY Times : When it comes to profit and satisfaction, craft business is showing how American manufacturing can compete in the global economy. Many of the manufacturers who are thriving in the United States (they exist, I swear!) have done so by avoiding direct competition with low-cost commodity producers in low-wage nations. Instead, they have scrutinized the market and created customized products for less price-sensitive customers. Facebook and Apple, Starbucks and the Boston Beer Company (which makes Sam Adams lager) show that people who identify and meet untapped needs can create thousands of jobs and billions in wealth. As our economy recovers, there will be nearly infinite ways to meet custom needs at premium prices. Meanwhile, the idea (or at least the hope) is that as China and other emerging nations develop, the United States can stay on the profitable forefront, delivering specific high-tech parts to their factories and the latest upmarket foods to thei...

Physicists Frank Wilczek at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology and Al Shapere at the University of Kentucky, theorize on the existence of Time Crystals or a state at which time arranges itself in the same way matter does within a crystal. From the Technology Review Blog One of the most powerful ideas in modern physics is that the Universe is governed by symmetry. This is the idea that certain properties of a system do not change when it undergoes a transformation of some kind. For example, if a system behaves the same way regardless of its orientation or movement in space, it must obey the law of conservation of momentum. If a system produces the same result regardless of when it takes place, it must obey the law of conservation of energy. From the io9 blog Wilczeck, along with collaborator Al Shapere from the University of Kentucky, has just published two papers examining how the mathematics that govern crystal formations in space could also work in time. They arg...

"Sassy Clock" [via Fail Blog ]

Probably the most common error made during the setting of a clock that makes noise is that of moving the hour hand independently of the minute hand. Remember: when you set a clock, just move the (longer) minute hand and let the hour hand follow along. Many modern clocks allow you to move the minute hand backwards (counter-clockwise) some allow you to shut off the sounds so that you don't have to listen at each interval. Either way, you shouldn't move the hour hand independently of the minute hand - because you will cause your mechanism to become out of sync with your hands. But, even if your hour hand does get moved, DON'T PANIC. Most modern clocks allow for an easy fix. Simply follow this procedure: 1. Move your (longer) minute hand clockwise to the hour. NOTE: if you have a quarter-hour or half-hour chime clock, you may have to wait at the quarter or half-hours for your clock to finish making its sounds. 2. Count the number of strikes or calls your clock give...

There have been some changes to the quartz cuckoo clock movements. The new models don't have the cumbersome "eye" or light sensor, but rather a more sophisticated night-off system. The newer clocks also have nicer music! In order to properly set up your new quartz cuckoo clock, there are a few things to take note of. The proper set-up procedure is already in your printed instructions, and here , but please also reference this article to troubleshoot. The point of the setup procedure is to FIRST properly align the chiming computer mechanism with the clock hands, and SECOND to set the correct time on your clock hands. In order to do this, you'll need to find out what time your bird thinks it is. Once you have the batteries installed, move the longer minute hand only (don't touch the shorter hour hand) clockwise until the hour is reached. Please make sure you have the cuckoo switched on before taking this step. Once the hour is reached, count the number o...

[via Laist ]

Schiffer LTD . has just released a new book on the subject of Black Forest Horology. It promises to be a lovely book with great pictures and information on very rare clocks. You'll probably recognize a few clocks that have been featured here on GermanClocks.org, as well as our online museum at www.NorthCoastImports.com/museum . Pre-order Rare and Unusual Black Forest Clocks, by Justin Miller at the author's website.

From Wikipedia : Sidereal time /saɪˈdɪəriəl/ is a time-keeping system astronomers use to keep track of the direction to point their telescopes to view a given star in the night sky. Briefly, a sidereal day is a "time scale that is based on the Earth's rate of rotation measured relative to the fixed stars."[1] From a given observation point, a star found at one location in the sky will be found at nearly the same location on another night at the same sidereal time. This is similar to how the time kept by a sundial can be used to find the location of the Sun. Just as the Sun and Moon appear to rise in the east and set in the west, so do the stars. Both solar time and sidereal time make use of the regularity of the Earth's rotation about its polar axis, solar time following the Sun while sidereal time roughly follows the stars. More exactly, sidereal time follows the vernal equinox, which is not quite fixed among the stars; Precession and nutation shift the equinox sl...

Now that's impressive... According to propmaker Dick George Creative's website , two of the models of the central-figure automaton actually worked! The automata actually drew Georges Melies's image without the use of CGI. The Automaton - Behind the Scenes from Sociates on Vimeo .

I finally had a chance to see the movie " Hugo " which is a film adaptation of Brian Selznick's book - which we've had on our reading list here for a long time. Best Movie Of All Time? Probably not, but definitely worth the watch (pun intended) for any clock nuts (and Clockworkpunks)! I loved the shots of Hugo's dad working on the two Orrerys. Did you see our NEW Orrery by the way?

We're pleased to introduce a new type of clock. As always, North Coast Imports is exploring new ideas in artistic horology. At the nexus between home design, horology, sculpture, and fashion you’ll find Sasa, a fresh expression of passing time. Rather than letting time control your life with schedules and limits, Sasa allows a more peaceful reminder of the flow of time. Each five minutes another bead clicks down. You can tell the hours by counting the number of colored beads that have fallen, and the minutes with the lighter beads. Tired of the reminder? Take the beads down and wear them as a necklace. Sasa, in Kiswahili culture, means “What is now.” By minimizing the focus on each minute that has past or is to come, we can instead live in the present. Visit our website for more information on these new and exciting clocks!

Crafter Mezcraft did a great Instructable on building this edible delight. Here's what she has to say: Over the past year I have been brainstorming about what I would do this year and what I am came up with was a Gingerbread Cuckoo clock with working gears. I couldn't get this idea out of my head and so I went forward and began planning and figuring this out! I have never actually made anything with gears before, so I will talk about how I tried to figure this out and my trials and tribulations in the process.