Oldest Clock Chimes Again (1956)

At Salisbury Cathedral, the oldest mechanical clock in the world returns to duty. Built in 1386 when Chaucer was alive and before the pendulum was invented, it has a folio and verge escapement, which may look clumsy to us now, but when this clock was made, it was a work of genius. Mr. T.R. Robinson, a well-known clock expert, found the mechanism where it had been thrown away in 1884 as so much scrap metal. He was asked to restore it to its original form and now it's working as well as ever. The clock has no dial, it merely chimes the hours, which in the leisurely Middle Ages was quite enough. When the hour approaches, the striking mechanism is released and a butterfly-shaped governor controls the speed of chiming. Mr. Robinson and his craftsmen had to replace less than a dozen worn parts, but they made exact replicas of the originals and used the original methods. For the medieval genius who made this clock, nearly 600 years ago, had few technical resources to call on, only the blacksmith and his own native wits.