Clock tower

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This article is about clock towers. For the video game series, see Clock Tower (series).
For the UAE roundabout, see Deira Clocktower.
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Elizabeth Tower, Westminster, London

A clock tower is a tower specifically built with one or more (often four) clock faces. Clock towers can be either freestanding or part of a church or municipal building such as a town hall.

The mechanism inside the tower is known as a turret clock. It often marks the hour (and sometimes segments of an hour) by sounding large bells or chimes, sometimes playing simple musical phrases or tunes.

Contents

Landmarks[edit]

Kremlin Clock on the Spasskaya Tower of the Moscow Kremlin.

Some clocks' towers are famously known landmarks. Five of the best-known are Elizabeth Tower, which houses the Great Bell (generally known as Big Ben) in London, the Rajabai Tower in Mumbai, the Spasskaya Tower of the Moscow Kremlin, the Torre dell'Orologio in the Piazza San Marco in Venice, Italy, and Zytglogge clock tower in the Old city of Bern, Switzerland.[1] The Royal Mecca Clock Tower in Saudi Arabia is the largest clock tower in the world.[2]

On New Year's Eve 2000 four 6.3-m clock faces were added to the top of the Warsaw Palace of Culture and Science building in Warsaw, Poland. This building is 231 m (757 ft) tall and is the second tallest clock tower in the world.[3] The NTT DoCoMo Yoyogi Building is 240 m (787 feet) high and is the tallest clock tower in the world. The Allen-Bradley Clock Tower is the tallest non-chiming four faced clock tower in the world.

History[edit]

Tower of the Winds in Athens
The famous clock tower of Zytglogge, Bern, Switzerland

Although clock towers are today mostly admired for their aesthetics, they once served an important purpose. Before the middle of the twentieth century, most people did not have watches, and prior to the 18th century even home clocks were rare. The first clocks didn't have faces, but were solely striking clocks, which sounded bells to call the surrounding community to work or to prayer. They were therefore placed in towers so the bells would be audible for a long distance. Clock towers were placed near the centres of towns and were often the tallest structures there. As clock towers became more common, the designers realized that a dial on the outside of the tower would allow the townspeople to read the time whenever they wanted.

The use of clock towers dates back to the antiquity. The earliest clock tower was the Tower of the Winds in Athens which featured eight sundials. In its interior, there was also a water clock (or clepsydra), driven by water coming down from the Acropolis.[4] In Song China, an astronomical clock tower was designed by Su Song and erected at Kaifeng in 1088, featuring a liquid escapement mechanism. In England, a clock was put up in a clock tower, the medieval precursor to Big Ben, at Westminster, in 1288;[5][6] and in 1292 a clock was put up in Canterbury Cathedral.[5] The oldest surviving clock tower in Europe is the Salisbury cathedral clock, completed in 1306; and another clock put up at St. Albans, in 1326, 'showed various astronomical phenomena'.[5]

Line (mains) synchronous tower clocks were introduced in the United States in the 1920s.

List of clock towers[edit]

Comparison of some notable four-face clocks at the same scale.
Top-left: Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower
Bottom-left: Allen-Bradley Clock Tower (previous record holder)
Middle: Abraj Al Bait
Top-right: Big Ben clock tower
Bottom-right: Kremlin Clock

Africa[edit]

Egypt[edit]

Nigeria[edit]

Americas[edit]

Argentina[edit]

Aruba[edit]

Willem III Tower at Fort Zoutman, Oranjestad, Aruba.

Barbados[edit]

Brazil[edit]

Canada[edit]

Montreal Clock Tower, Quebec.

Mexico[edit]

Peru[edit]

United States[edit]

Clock tower of Chicago's Wrigley Building from Trump International Hotel and Tower.
The Ferry Terminal Clock Tower, Hoboken, New Jersey.
See also category: Clock towers in the United States

Asia[edit]

Hong Kong[edit]

Hong Kong Clock Tower.
Main Building of the University of Santo Tomas, Manila

India[edit]

Rajabai Tower, South Mumbai.
Central Clock Tower with entirely different architecture located in the busiest commercial center of Erode.

Indonesia[edit]

Jam Gadang, Bukittinggi, Indonesia

Iran[edit]

Israel[edit]

The Jaffa Clock Tower, Israel

Japan[edit]

Lebanon[edit]

Malaysia[edit]

Pakistan[edit]

Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall, Singapore.

Philippines[edit]

The clock tower of the Manila City Hall.

Singapore[edit]

Sri Lanka[edit]

Myanmar[edit]

Saudi Arabia[edit]

United Arab Emirates[edit]

Europe[edit]

On New Year's Eve 2000 four 6.3-metre clock faces were added to the top of the Warsaw Palace of Culture and Science building in Warsaw, Poland. This building is 231 m (757 ft) tall and is the second tallest clock tower in the world .[3]

Albania[edit]

Austria[edit]

Denmark[edit]

Greece[edit]

Finland[edit]

France[edit]

Germany[edit]

Lithuania[edit]

Montenegro[edit]

Poland[edit]

Romania[edit]

Russia[edit]

Serbia[edit]

The Clock Gate or Sahat Kula (Сахат кула) (clock tower) at the fortress wall of the Belgrade Fortress, Belgrade, Serbia.

Slovakia[edit]

Switzerland[edit]

Turkey[edit]

Ukraine[edit]

United Kingdom[edit]

Oceania[edit]

Australia[edit]

See also[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Clock towers

References[edit]

  1. ^ "UK Parliament - Big Ben". Retrieved 2009-10-27. 
  2. ^ Alsharif, Asma (11 August 2010). "World's biggest clock begins ticking in Mecca". Reuters. Retrieved 14 June 2013. 
  3. ^ a b History of PKiN in a nutshell.
  4. ^ Joseph V. Noble; Derek J. de Solla Price: The Water Clock in the Tower of the Winds, American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 72, No. 4 (1968), pp. 345-355 (353)
  5. ^ a b c Clocks, Encyclopaedia Britannica 5, 835 (1951).
  6. ^ Frederick Tupper, Jr., 'Anglo-Saxon Dæg-Mæl', Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, Vol. 10, No. 2 (1895), p. 130, citing Archæologia, v, 416.
  7. ^ http://www.thelawrenceschool.org/

External links[edit]

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