Are You Cuckoo For Cuckoo Clocks?
Cuckoo clocks are popular with many people and are one of the most collected of
all clocks. I know my grandmother had a house full of them.
Cuckoo clocks are usually pendulum clocks that strike on the hour using small
bellows and whistles imitating the Cuckoo bird and also striking a gong.
Cuckoo clocks were invented in the Black Forest of Germany in the town of Schönwald
by Franz Ketterer in 1738. When he first started making the clocks he
implemented a system of small bellows and whistles imitaint the Cuckoo and just
placed them in a regular Dutch clock. The shapes that we see now of the
birdhouse or chalet came as later refinements. The design of a cuckoo clock is
now conventional. Most are made in the shape of a rustic birdhouse or chalet.
They hang on the wall, and are housed in wooden cases, frequently decorated with
carved leaves; sometimes deer and other animals are added. Most now have an
automaton of the bird that appears through a small trap door when the clock is
striking, and vanishes behind the door after the clock is done.
The bird is often made to move while the clock strikes, usually by means of an
arm that lifts the back of the carving. Some Cuckoo clocks have musical
movements, and play a tune on a music box before striking the hours or
half-hours. Musical cuckoo clocks frequently have other automated creatures that
move when the music box plays. The clocks are almost always weight driven; a
very few cuckoo clocks are spring driven.
The production center of Cuckoo clocks continues to be in the Black Forest
region of Germany, in the area of Triberg and Neustadt. The Cuckoo clock is
often wrongly associated with Switzerland, as in the movie The Third Man. In the
US, this error is probably due to a story by Mark Twain in which the hero
depicts the Swiss town of Lucerne as the home of cuckoo clocks.
Recently, fake quartz battery powered cuckoo clocks have been marketed widely
which do not have genuine cuckoo bellows, and typically generate their striking
sounds electronically which sound electronic as well. The weights are
traditionally cast in the shape of pine cones. The pendulum bob is usually
another carved leaf. The dial is small, and typically marked with Roman
numerals.
Cuckoo clocks can be a great conversation piece and quality clocks are sought
out as collector’s items.
Article Source:
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Gregg Hall is a business consultant and author for many
online and offline businesses and lives in Navarre Florida with his 16 year old
son. Check out the quality wall
clocks at www.customwallclocksdirect.com