The Hands of Time

October 28, 1999

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The Hands of Time

By Alvin Powell
Gazette Staff

Each week throughout the year, an 18th-century Dutch clock at the Fogg Art Museum is wound by hand. Daylight-saving time notwithstanding, the clock tick-tocks on.

Once a week, at 8:20 a.m., Robert Pekala takes a 220-year-old key and winds the only working clock on display at the Fogg Art Museum.

The timepiece is a Dutch longcase clock built by Otto Van Meürs in about 1770. The weekly winding pulls three weights up, harnessing the power of gravity to turn the clock’s hands for the coming days.

Pekala, who crafts and installs exhibits at the Museum, is one of several people trained to wind the clock, but the one to whom the task usually falls.

The clock, made of oak with a walnut veneer inlay, chimes in two bell tones. It strikes the low tone on the hour and the higher tone on the half hour.

The clock is wound through three holes in the clock face. The key is inserted through each hole into the internal mechanism and turned, raising the weights.

Because the clock’s hands sometimes block the outside of the holes, and the clock’s internal gears sometimes block the inside of the holes, winding can only occur at specific times.

Part of Robert Pekala's weekly routine is to wind one of the clocks on exhibit at the Fogg Museum. After 220 years, the clock is still accurate to within minutes a month.

There are a couple of other tricks to the winding process, which takes just 5 or 10 minutes. One is to keep track of how many times you’ve turned the key. Two cranks will raise the weights enough to operate the clock for a day. Therefore, it takes 14 turns to fully wind the clock. Also, if you’re winding rapidly and not paying attention, the weights could bump into the top, jump off the hooks that hold them, and fall, damaging the clock.

For a 220-year-old clock, it "keeps very accurate time," Pekala said. Once every few months he has to adjust the time, but only by a few minutes.

Setting the clock back an hour after daylight-saving time ends this weekend will be easy, Pekala said. He’ll just manually stop the clock’s pendulum for an hour, while time catches up. After the hour has passed, Pekala will give the pendulum a little push to get it going again.