Was Peter Columbo a Clockmaker?
Probably not, but he would have probably been pretty good at clock restoration because oftentimes, restoring an antique clock in a historically correct manner not only requires a mandatory high level of technical skills and knowledge but also the intellectual curiosity, deductive reasoning and persistent "detective" work to understand, and faithfully recreate, the original clockmaker's design given the typical situation of incomplete information and more than a few missing parts. Recently, I had the opportunity to acquire a rare, and very early ( ca. 1876), Johann Baptist Beha Number 932 cuckoo and monk clock. This clock is rather unusual for a Beha clock in that it not only has time, strike and cuckoo complications but also an animation complication in which a monk comes out of the lower door three times a day to ring the Angelus (the monk's arm goes up and down while clock's two gongs are struck to simulate the ringing of a bell in the church's steeple). ...
