Unlike digital displays, the largest denomination hand on an analogue clock display contains all of the information that the smaller hands do (depending on the movement in some cases).
You would be surprised. When I was a kid, I sometimes used to stare at the clocks with an analog face at the train station while waiting for the train to school to arrive.
Interestingly enough the seconds hand would go slightly faster than actual seconds and at the 60 seconds the seconds hand would get stuck for a moment as if it was pushing the minutes hand and then the minutes hand would flip to the next minute.
The description describes how they work, which seems like a mixture of digital and analog (due to the use of both cogs and relays + propagation of pulses from central to local clocks), translated:
- The seconds hand makes a revolution of 57-58 seconds and is then stuck for 2-3 seconds.
- The seconds hand is driven using 230V.
- The minutes hand get a 12V or 24V pulse once every 60 seconds. The polarity has to swap every 60 seconds. The swapping of the polarity can be done using a relay or specially-made components.
- The hours hand is driven by the minutes hand using cogs.
The key to this mechanism is that the stepping of the minute hand is what unlocks the second hand. Pretty clever low-tech way to keep a LOT of clocks in really close sync.
Dutch train stations used to have these too, I loved to watch them in action while waiting for a train.
If you think of the design goals (synchronizing clocks across the train network) and the technology available at the time, the design is actually pretty clever. Knowing the exact second is not important - if the second hand actually completes a whole cycle in only 58 seconds, this is still good enough to be able to see how much of the minute has passed. Having the exact same minute on all clocks is much more important than that - especially since train departure times are usually "on the minute".
What technology wasn't invented by the time this clock was created??? And the design is bad, nothing clever about it, clocks can move their minutes hand to give the necessary indication
So name a single time tech and explain how the lack of it didn’t prevent other train station operators having clocks without jumping hands operating even before 1944?
(not sure, but think that the minute timetable resolution was pretty universal)
You would be surprised. When I was a kid, I sometimes used to stare at the clocks with an analog face at the train station while waiting for the train to school to arrive.
Interestingly enough the seconds hand would go slightly faster than actual seconds and at the 60 seconds the seconds hand would get stuck for a moment as if it was pushing the minutes hand and then the minutes hand would flip to the next minute.
Found a video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruGggPYQqHI
The description describes how they work, which seems like a mixture of digital and analog (due to the use of both cogs and relays + propagation of pulses from central to local clocks), translated:
- The seconds hand makes a revolution of 57-58 seconds and is then stuck for 2-3 seconds.
- The seconds hand is driven using 230V.
- The minutes hand get a 12V or 24V pulse once every 60 seconds. The polarity has to swap every 60 seconds. The swapping of the polarity can be done using a relay or specially-made components.
- The hours hand is driven by the minutes hand using cogs.
Edit: more information and references here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_railway_clock#Technology