[time-nuts] The need for quartz crystals and mains frequency (was: Mains Frequency)

[ed breya]

Hi Hal,

I have one of these big (maybe 14" dia) old office clocks, still 
working, hanging on the garage wall at the farm, next to a modern WWVB 
clock. I don't worry about what time it says, but I sometimes look to 
estimate total power outage time (can be quite a lot up there) since the 
last reset. I think it's around sixty years old. It has the flag 
indicator as described, that resets when you pull the time set knob at 
the bottom.

I remember when I was a kid, I either repaired or junked out many of the 
Telechron (I think that was GE's brand name for it) clocks, which were 
the standard for nearly all AC-powered clocks at the time. There was no 
gray area in the failures - the sealed motor either worked or not, and 
if it did work, then the problem was in the external gear train (almost 
always from dirt and lint). I took apart many of the motors to see how 
they worked (or didn't). The usual failure was that the oil fill leaked 
out. Sometimes, the little magnetic rotor would loose enough of its 
reluctance that it wouldn't start reliably or have enough torque to run 
the gearbox.

I also lived in Syracuse (actually Liverpool, one of the burbs) for a 
while. I remember in 8th grade, we went on a class tour of NiMo's brand 
new nuclear plant at Nine Mile Point, just before it was commissioned. 
Fascinating.

Ed