Cuckoo clock
The cuckoo clock is traditionally mainly made in the Black Forest and is known worldwide. It is often a wall clock with a mechanical pendulum mechanism with a chain hoist and striking mechanism. Since the middle of the 19th century, the basic shape of the housing has mostly been modeled on a stationer's house with a sloping roof and decorated with more or less elaborately carved wooden ornaments. The actual eponymous feature of the cuckoo clock, however, is the striking mechanism . A mechanical cuckoo serves as the acoustic time signal , which is movably mounted in the housing behind a door-like flap above the dial and is usually swiveled out every full hour. In addition, one or more cuckoo calls are sounded on the hour depending on the number of hours (full hours are counted), usually together with a gong.
The “cuckoo call” is traditionally generated by a pair of organ pipes of different heights inside the clock. However, some patents manage with just one flute. Depending on the design, the mechanical cuckoo - traditionally carved from wood and painted, today often made from plastic - is moved or opens its beak to match the cuckoo call. In addition, other movable decorative elements can be attached to the outside of the clock, which move (usually only on the hour) (dancers, other birds). Today, in addition to the traditional mechanical cuckoo clocks, electro-mechanical models are also offered with quartz clockwork , electronically generated cuckoo calls, as well as chain hoist and pendulum dummies.
How a mechanical cuckoo clock works
Today the mechanical clockwork of a cuckoo clock is mostly similar to a conventional striking clockwork. It also has the so-called "bird's rod", a swivel device that moves the "cuckoo" towards the flap when it is triggered. The flap is opened with a wire bracket attached to the bird's foot. At the end of the felling process, the bird perch is swiveled in the opposite direction and the flap is closed.
The cuckoo call is triggered by two fundamentally different principles. Until well into the 20th century, the striking mechanism was usually controlled by a lock disc . This historical functionality of the cuckoo clock is not discussed here, only the interplay of step wheel and release lever that is common today. While the weight on the clockwork chain hoist is constantly moving downwards, the release of the strike is blocked. A step wheel with twelve steps is coupled to the hour hand. If the minute hand is in the "twelve o'clock position", a lock is released for a brief moment and a vertically toothed trigger lever ( rake ) falls onto the step wheel, depending on the time of day. At twelve o'clock the level is smallest and the trigger drops the lowest. The blockage is released and the chain hoist starts moving. It drives a cam wheel, which takes over the "operation" of the striking mechanism. Two bellows weighted with small weights or wooden blocks are lifted and released again with a time delay using a wire rod. Each bellows pumps air into a small pipe, creating the cuckoo tone (first the high tone, then the lower one). The impression of a cuckoo call only comes about when the sound of the whistle is at the correct distance from one another. After the second whistle, the cam wheel triggers the blow on a gong. It can also move other decorative elements such as birds, dancers, etc. attached to the outside.
With every single "blow" the vertically toothed trigger lever is raised by one tooth by means of a rotating cam element coupled to the cam wheel and locked into place at each tooth by the lock that holds the trigger lever up outside of the blow mode. At twelve o'clock, the cam element can rotate twelve times until the trigger lever has reached its starting point and the striking mechanism is blocked again.
In the case of very elaborately animated exterior decorations, an additional striking mechanism can be used or there is another “door” for the quail , which strikes every quarter or half hour. Such clocks then have three chain mechanisms. If you have to reset the cuckoo clock so that the number of calls by the quail and the cuckoo corresponds to the number of hours, you first look into the clockwork on the left and briefly press the wire lever there to trigger the call of the quail. Then you open the clock case on the right side to set the cuckoo's hour call. The call is triggered by briefly tapping the setting wire, which must be released immediately. Repeat tapping until the correct number of calls is reached.
Depending on the design, cuckoo clocks have to be rewound every 24 hours to 8 days. As with other chain hoists, the lowered weights have to be lifted up again by hand. The fact that the chain hoist clockwork usually has a shorter running time than spring clockwork is partially compensated for by the fact that the running reserve is always visible directly from the position of the weights and the clockwork cannot be damaged by uncontrolled winding ("overtightening"). Like other clocks, some models have a stopper that allows the cuckoo call to be turned off at night, for example.
The first cuckoo clocks
The origins of the cuckoo clock are obscure.
As early as 1619, a clock with a cuckoo scream entered the collection of Elector Johann Georg I of Saxony .
The mechanic Salomon de Caus had already described in 1615 how the cuckoo call could be mechanically imitated with two pipes . Obviously, Athanasius Kircher oriented himself in the widespread manual for music Musurgia Universalis thirty-five years later on de Caus (1650), when he presented a mechanical organ with various automatic figures, including a mechanical cuckoo figure. This cuckoo automatically opens its beak and moves its wings and tail tip. At the same time, the cuckoo call sounds, generated by two organ pipes that are tuned to a minor or major third.
In 1669, in his book Horologi Elementari , Domenico Martinelli suggested using the cuckoo call to display the hours. From this point in time at the latest, the mechanism for a cuckoo clock was known.
The first Black Forest cuckoo clocks
It is controversial who constructed the first Black Forest cuckoo clocks. The first two historians of Black Forest watchmaking already contradict each other on this question. Markus Fidelis Jäck claimed in 1810 that Franz Anton Ketterer from Schönwald was the first to make cuckoo clocks at the beginning of the 1730s. Franz Steyrer, on the other hand, reports in his History of Black Forest Clockmaking (1796) that Michael Dilger in Neukirch and Matthäus Hummel began to build cuckoo clocks in 1742. Wolfgang Altendorff, however, attributes the first Black Forest cuckoo clock to Franz Anton Ketterer's father Franziskus Ketterer (* 1676; † July 2, 1753 in Schönwald).
In the 19th century, the cuckoo was found in lacquer plate clocks as well as in frame clocks, before the railway house clock replaced all other forms of cuckoo clock from the market within a few years.
The train station clock
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In September 1850 Robert Gerwig , the director of the Grand Ducal Badische Uhrmacherschule in Furtwangen , called for a competition for a contemporary clock design.
The most momentous design comes from Friedrich Eisenlohr , who as architect was responsible for most of the buildings along the Baden state railway . Eisenlohr provided the facade of a station guard's house with a dial. The archetype of the cuckoo clock, which is still popular today as a souvenir, was born.
Around 1860 the station clock moved away from the originally rather strict graphic form. In 1862, Johann Baptist Beha from Eisenbach offered richly decorated cuckoo clocks with carved leg hands and weights in the form of pine cones for the first time.
Since then, the train station clock with its lush three-dimensional carvings of plants and animals has been a long-running souvenir . Abroad, the cuckoo clock is not only a symbol for the Black Forest, but also for all of Germany , due to the cultural equality and the spread of clocks also for Switzerland and Austria .
Modern interpretations
Since the 2010s, cuckoo clocks have also been given a modern interpretation. There are cuckoo clocks in minimalist cuboid, cube and pyramid shapes, in bright colors and with unusual decors. Technically, new paths are also being taken. The designer cuckoo clock Hansruedi, for example, uses a light sensor to automatically rest the cuckoo at bedtime.
Importance in popular culture
Cuckoo clocks are common in literature. Astrid Lindgren 's children's book Kuckuck Lustig is about a cuckoo clock , in which, however, the father explains to the children that the cuckoo clocks come from Switzerland. The cuckoo clock is a prop used in numerous comics and cartoons, whereby the cuckoo almost always - in contrast to the commercially available cuckoo clocks - is attached to a scissor arm and can snap out of the clock a little.
In the film Eins, Zwei, Drei a "cuckoo clock" appears again and again, which contains a Uncle Sam instead of a cuckoo , with the melody of Yankee Doodle .
Modern versions of the cuckoo clock are being worked on in art (e.g. Stefan Strumbel ) and fashion (e.g. Hermès) as well as in watchmaking. The attempt is made to combine traditional components such as the Black Forest clockwork with a correspondingly modified exterior.
In Fritz Benscher's quiz program Tick-Tack-Quiz , which was shown on ARD between 1958 and 1967 , the defeated candidate received a cuckoo clock as a consolation prize.
Also in Michael Ende's “ Der satanarchäolügenialkohöllische Wunschpunsch ” there is an ouch clock that is reminiscent of a cuckoo clock.
In the film “ The Third Man ” (1949) Orson Welles gives the so-called “Cuckoo Clock Speech”. He also claims that the cuckoo clock comes from Switzerland.
See also
literature
- Wilhelm Schneider: On the history of the origins of the cuckoo clock. In: Old clocks. Volume 3, 1985, pp. 13-21.
- Wilhelm Schneider: Early cuckoo clocks by Johann Baptist Beha in Eisenbach in the Black Forest. In: clocks. Volume 3, 1987, pp. 45-53.
- Richard Mühe, Helmut Kahlert, Beatrice Techen: cuckoo clocks. Callwey, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-7667-0909-7 .
- Wilhelm Schneider: The iron cuckoo clock. In: Uhren, Vol. 12, 1989, Issue 5, pp. 37-44.
- Helmut Kahlert: Remembering an ingenious design. 150 years of Bahnhäusle clocks. In: Classic watches. 2002, H. 4, pp. 26-30.
- Herbert Jüttemann: The Black Forest Clock. Badenia, Karlsruhe 1991, ISBN 3-7617-0280-9 ; 2000, ISBN 978-3-89735-360-2 .
- Johannes Graf: Success story of the Black Forest cuckoo clock. In: Classic watches. 2006, no. 5.
- Julia Scholz: Mon Amour cuckoo clock. The fascination of the Black Forest clock. Theiss, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-8062-2797-0 (catalog for the special exhibition of the German Watch Museum Furtwangen ).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Inventory book of the Dresden Kunstkammer, 1619: “Darzu is also anew income [fol. 88 v.] 1 o'clock with a cuckoo, so mad and screaming. Standing on a black pedestal made by Eubenenem Holtz on the Balbier lade. ”(Kind communication from the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden)
- ↑ Salomon de Caus: Of violent movements, description of a number of so useful as funny machiners besides different demolishing of a number of hells or grottos and lust Brunne [n], vol. 1. Franckfurt 1616. Problema XXII: “Wiltu but a Gauchsgeschrey have / so put only two cones on the Trumm (...) at appropriate intervals: and the pipes must be one and a half inches in diametre wide / and the longest one shoe / the other 10 inches long (...). "
- ↑ Article "Art on the Cuckoo"