My 71 year old father lives in Florida and is a garage sale antique fanatic. He finds all sorts of old desks, bicycles, phones you name it, he finds it. He calls me on the phone Saturday and is giddy with what he found just around the corner from his house. He tells me he was looking at a clock that caught his eye. It was gold plated and looked really nice. He gets it home and discovers it is an Atmos Clock. Never heard of it? Me neither. It is practically a perpetual motion machine that runs on atmospheric pressure and nothing more. It is an amazing piece of technology that's been around for 80 years.
Anyway, the lady told my dad she had received it as a wedding gift in 1953 and it never worked. He gets it home and levels it properly and it begins to work immediately, for the first time since it left the factory 56 years ago.
Oh, by the way, the factory it left was Jaeger-LeCoultre and my dad paid a king's ransom of...................2.00
He contacted one of the folks online who specialize in these clocks and the guy told him the clock was worth at least 4000.00. Seeing that it was kept in a curio cabinet forever and is essentially a new clock. Pretty cool piece of machinery and a helluva a find!
Pic of clock.
The picture is not my dad's clock, but the same model. It's not too good, but you can at least see it.
Edit: From the above webpage:
In 1928 a Neuchatel engineer called Jean-Leon Reutter built a clock driven quite literally by air. But it took the Jaeger-LeCoultre workshop a few more years to convert this idea into a technical form that could be patented. And to perfect it to such a degree that the Atmos practically achieved perpetual motion. In 1936 production of the Atmos began.
The technical principle is a beguiling one: inside a hermetically sealed capsule is a mixture of gas and liquid (ethyl chloride) which expands as the temperature rises and contracts as it falls, making the capsule move like a concertina. This motion constantly winds the mainspring, a variation in temperature of only one degree in the range between 15 and 30 degrees centigrade being sufficient for two days' operation.
To convert this small amount of energy into motion, everything inside the Atmos naturally has to work as smoothly and quietly as possible. The balance, for example, executes only two torsional oscillations per minute, which is 150 times slower that the pendulum in a conventional clock. So it's not surprising that 60 million Atmos clocks together consume no more energy that one 15-watt light bulb.
All its other parts, too, are not only of the highest precision, but also practically wear-free. An Atmos can therefore expect to enjoy a service life of a good 600 years, although with today's air pollution a through cleaning is recommended about every twenty years.
Peace
Lounatik
Anyway, the lady told my dad she had received it as a wedding gift in 1953 and it never worked. He gets it home and levels it properly and it begins to work immediately, for the first time since it left the factory 56 years ago.
Oh, by the way, the factory it left was Jaeger-LeCoultre and my dad paid a king's ransom of...................2.00
He contacted one of the folks online who specialize in these clocks and the guy told him the clock was worth at least 4000.00. Seeing that it was kept in a curio cabinet forever and is essentially a new clock. Pretty cool piece of machinery and a helluva a find!
Pic of clock.
The picture is not my dad's clock, but the same model. It's not too good, but you can at least see it.
Edit: From the above webpage:
In 1928 a Neuchatel engineer called Jean-Leon Reutter built a clock driven quite literally by air. But it took the Jaeger-LeCoultre workshop a few more years to convert this idea into a technical form that could be patented. And to perfect it to such a degree that the Atmos practically achieved perpetual motion. In 1936 production of the Atmos began.
The technical principle is a beguiling one: inside a hermetically sealed capsule is a mixture of gas and liquid (ethyl chloride) which expands as the temperature rises and contracts as it falls, making the capsule move like a concertina. This motion constantly winds the mainspring, a variation in temperature of only one degree in the range between 15 and 30 degrees centigrade being sufficient for two days' operation.
To convert this small amount of energy into motion, everything inside the Atmos naturally has to work as smoothly and quietly as possible. The balance, for example, executes only two torsional oscillations per minute, which is 150 times slower that the pendulum in a conventional clock. So it's not surprising that 60 million Atmos clocks together consume no more energy that one 15-watt light bulb.
All its other parts, too, are not only of the highest precision, but also practically wear-free. An Atmos can therefore expect to enjoy a service life of a good 600 years, although with today's air pollution a through cleaning is recommended about every twenty years.
Peace
Lounatik
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