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Mr. Henry Ellis Warren of Ashland, Massachusetts, did not receive any great recognition for his invention of the synchronous electric motor, back in the summer of 1916. And why should he? His motor used a great deal of power (for its size) to do only a trivial amount of work. There were already much better electric motors for operating tools, pumping water, and that sort of thing.
But Mr. Warren knew exactly why he wanted the synchronous motor. It fit his needs perfectly.
He had for quite a while been experimenting with electric clocks. You might be surprised to know that his early designs were battery-operated. They were simply a pendulum clock in which a battery provided power to an electromagnet that pushed the pendulum as it went by. Or, in other words, a conventional mechanical wall clock of the day, except that it got its motive power from a battery and electromagnet rather than a spring.
This wasn't much of an advantage over a spring-driven clock. Mr. Warren didn't sell very many of them. He kept his day job, managing someone else's manufacturing plant. His Warren Clock Company remained a hobby.
He still thought the electric clock was the way to go, however, if only he could find some way to drive a clock off of domestic electricity. And so he came up with the synchronous motor. Its one advantage was that it ran at a fixed speed relative to the cycles of main-line electric power. Since that power was even then alternating current more often than not, running at 60 cycles/second in the USA, the steady cycles of the electric current could drive a clock with no problem at all.
In theory. The problem was that the cycles of the electric current weren't all that steady. And why should they be? Incandescent light bulbs, electric heaters, and the more powerful kinds of electric motor didn't care whether or not the cycles were precise. Precise timing only mattered to electric clocks, and nobody had invented the electric clock until Henry Warren started fiddling around.
A more rational person might have given up at this point. But Henry Warren was one of these bloody-minded people you just have to admire, in spite of yourself. He proceeded to change the world until his stupid little home gadget would work properly therein.
And there's the beginning of the electric clock. Mr. Warren renamed his clock and his company Telechron, "Time from afar." Perhaps he hoped telechron with a small t would join telegraph and telephone in the dictionary. Didn't. But he'd already changed the world to suit his needs once, so why shouldn't he expect to do it again?
Flash forward to yesterday, when I was looking for an alarm clock in the local store.
I have a perfectly good clock radio, but you know how it is setting the alarm time on those things. My work forces me to get up at oh-god-o'clock once in a while, which means I have to reset the alarm. Usually when I'm already pretty sleepy.'
I need to push-- let's see, one button twice to get to alarm set, then push a second button within five seconds to pick which alarm, and then figure out which buttons actually set the time, by which time I've set the thing to wake me with the CD but there's no CD in it, so I have to figure out which wrong button I pushed and fix THAT, and my eyes aren't what they were, reading the instructions is not easy; medium gray small type on a dark gray background is not that much help to me in a poorly lit bedroom...
So I bought a cheap Chinese electric clock. The kind with ONE knob to set the time, ONE knob to set the alarm time, and ONE button to turn the alarm on and off.
The text on the box was a little strange. "Accurate quartz movement! Needs no battery!" it said. I wondered if that was right, since I knew the usual electric clocks use synchronous motors, not quartz movements. But I shrugged and bought the thing.
Darned if the box wasn't telling the truth. It IS in fact a quartz clock that plugs into the wall. Just the same as a battery powered portable alarm clock, except with an AC to DC transformer built in more or less where the battery compartment should be.
I can't think why anyone would design a clock in this backward manner unless quartz clock movements and AC to DC transformers are down to about twenty for a dollar now. Basically, technology takes a giant leap backward to more or less what it was before Mr. Warren started fiddling around in his Massachusetts workshop.
Oddly enough, thanks to Henry Warren's inventions, the standard motor-driven electric clock is going to be more accurate in the long haul than this hybrid transformer-powered quartz thing. Not that I mind, really; it will be accurate within five or ten minutes a year, and that's plenty good enough for running overnight on those few occasions I actually need it.
But I bet that somewhere near Ashland, Massachusetts, the bones of Mr. Henry Ellis Warren are spinning in his grave. At a perfectly synchronized one-point-zero-zero-zero revolutions per minute, no doubt.
REFERENCE: Historical information from http://www.clockhistory.com/telechron/
But Mr. Warren knew exactly why he wanted the synchronous motor. It fit his needs perfectly.
He had for quite a while been experimenting with electric clocks. You might be surprised to know that his early designs were battery-operated. They were simply a pendulum clock in which a battery provided power to an electromagnet that pushed the pendulum as it went by. Or, in other words, a conventional mechanical wall clock of the day, except that it got its motive power from a battery and electromagnet rather than a spring.
This wasn't much of an advantage over a spring-driven clock. Mr. Warren didn't sell very many of them. He kept his day job, managing someone else's manufacturing plant. His Warren Clock Company remained a hobby.
He still thought the electric clock was the way to go, however, if only he could find some way to drive a clock off of domestic electricity. And so he came up with the synchronous motor. Its one advantage was that it ran at a fixed speed relative to the cycles of main-line electric power. Since that power was even then alternating current more often than not, running at 60 cycles/second in the USA, the steady cycles of the electric current could drive a clock with no problem at all.
In theory. The problem was that the cycles of the electric current weren't all that steady. And why should they be? Incandescent light bulbs, electric heaters, and the more powerful kinds of electric motor didn't care whether or not the cycles were precise. Precise timing only mattered to electric clocks, and nobody had invented the electric clock until Henry Warren started fiddling around.
A more rational person might have given up at this point. But Henry Warren was one of these bloody-minded people you just have to admire, in spite of yourself. He proceeded to change the world until his stupid little home gadget would work properly therein.
And there's the beginning of the electric clock. Mr. Warren renamed his clock and his company Telechron, "Time from afar." Perhaps he hoped telechron with a small t would join telegraph and telephone in the dictionary. Didn't. But he'd already changed the world to suit his needs once, so why shouldn't he expect to do it again?
Flash forward to yesterday, when I was looking for an alarm clock in the local store.
I have a perfectly good clock radio, but you know how it is setting the alarm time on those things. My work forces me to get up at oh-god-o'clock once in a while, which means I have to reset the alarm. Usually when I'm already pretty sleepy.'
I need to push-- let's see, one button twice to get to alarm set, then push a second button within five seconds to pick which alarm, and then figure out which buttons actually set the time, by which time I've set the thing to wake me with the CD but there's no CD in it, so I have to figure out which wrong button I pushed and fix THAT, and my eyes aren't what they were, reading the instructions is not easy; medium gray small type on a dark gray background is not that much help to me in a poorly lit bedroom...
So I bought a cheap Chinese electric clock. The kind with ONE knob to set the time, ONE knob to set the alarm time, and ONE button to turn the alarm on and off.
The text on the box was a little strange. "Accurate quartz movement! Needs no battery!" it said. I wondered if that was right, since I knew the usual electric clocks use synchronous motors, not quartz movements. But I shrugged and bought the thing.
Darned if the box wasn't telling the truth. It IS in fact a quartz clock that plugs into the wall. Just the same as a battery powered portable alarm clock, except with an AC to DC transformer built in more or less where the battery compartment should be.
I can't think why anyone would design a clock in this backward manner unless quartz clock movements and AC to DC transformers are down to about twenty for a dollar now. Basically, technology takes a giant leap backward to more or less what it was before Mr. Warren started fiddling around in his Massachusetts workshop.
Oddly enough, thanks to Henry Warren's inventions, the standard motor-driven electric clock is going to be more accurate in the long haul than this hybrid transformer-powered quartz thing. Not that I mind, really; it will be accurate within five or ten minutes a year, and that's plenty good enough for running overnight on those few occasions I actually need it.
But I bet that somewhere near Ashland, Massachusetts, the bones of Mr. Henry Ellis Warren are spinning in his grave. At a perfectly synchronized one-point-zero-zero-zero revolutions per minute, no doubt.
REFERENCE: Historical information from http://www.clockhistory.com/telechron/
