Recycling ain’t what it used to be. Launceston clock and watch experts Graham and Sallie Mulligan came across a tapestry footstool which their sharp eyes recognised as comprising re-used parts of an old clock. Further investigation revealed that the parts came from a significant wall clock which had been retailed in Launceston by clockmaker James Barclay between his arrival in 1834 and his death in 1845.
R.B. Smith made his model of the Strasburg Clock to celebrate the centenary of British settlement. It was hailed as a “scientific triumph of Australian workmanship”. At first, Smith exhibited it privately “like a fat woman in a country fair”1 until it found a home in Sydney’s Technological Museum. The clock has been there ever since, a popular and much-loved exhibit although the mechanism has been unreliable. Now, Andrew Montana turns our attention to identifying the subjects and painters of the portraits decorating Sydney’s Centennial Strasburg Clock.
In the 18th century, a time keeper that would keep accurate time at sea was essential to find longitude. Britain’s Board of Longitude offered a massive prize of £20,000 for the inventor of such a device, contributing to major advances in timekeeping. John Hawkins argues that a time keeper by London watchmaker John Arnold, subsequently modified, can be identified as the time keeper Arnold no 5 commissioned by Joseph Banks to be taken on Cook’s second voyage in 1772, and that this is the world’s first pocket chronometer.
