Exellent intel, thanks! The face has a penciled legend "I C Depot" which I suppose stands for Illinois Central, the railroad. But I would think mine works the same way as all the others. The coil holds down a follower against a cam, so the :59:59 thing makes sense. I will check this out by just doing it with a button at first.
On Jan 21, 2012, at 9:25, brucekar...@aol.com wrote: > Jim, > > If your Western Union clock is similar to the type used in broadcasting, > you might want a setting pulse that starts at 59:59 and ends at 00:00 . The > reason is that at 59:59 the magnet pulls the second hand to the 12 o'clock > position and releases it on the hour. The one-second difference might seem > trivial, but it's actually about three words for an announcer beginning a > network broadcast. > > When Western Union got out of the clock business in the late 1970s > (following a technician strike where the master clocks were ignored and > service > deteriorated) the company I worked for purchased the clock installation > from > Western Union (for $75 per clock as I remember) and we installed a digital > master system. The Western Union clocks were all connected in series and > driven as a constant-current teletype type loop. We had wire-wrap logic > panels associated with the digital master time system. Signals for the W. > U. > clocks, for alerting control rooms before newscasts, starting recordings, > etc., were implemented by simply adding chips, DIP relays, 14/16-pin boards > with components such as timing capacitors, and wire-wraping the underside > pins. I/O was implemented with those 14 and 16-pin DIP connectors on one > end of ribbon cables -- the other ends being terminated on barrier strips on > rack wall panels. > > Bruce > _______________________________________________ > time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com > To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts > and follow the instructions there. _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.