Abe electric clock

Mechanism

The power source is the force of a wound-up weight descending under gravity, converted into rotation to drive the clock. A pendulum and anchor escapement keep an accurate rhythm, and the built-in generating mechanism produces an electrical signal once a minute. Because this signal drives the slave clocks, many clocks in distant places can be kept at the same time as the master.

Hikokichi Abe

He was born on October 2, 1864, in Muikamachi, Yamagata City. At 18 he went to Tokyo and learned the trade at the Kobayashi clock shop in Kyobashi, and at 20 he returned home and opened a clock shop in Nanokamachi, Yamagata City. He then devoted himself to research on electric clocks, improving them step by step from a stand-alone electric clock, to one with a generator that needed no battery, and on to a linked clock using batteries. He obtained 12 patents in Japan and abroad. He died on October 9, 1931.

Surviving clocks

Master clocks remain at the Yokohama Local Meteorological Observatory, the Osaka Norin Kaikan, the Oe Building and the Doda Kaikan, among others, and slave clocks at Marunouchi Brick Square and the Ibaraki Prefectural Sannomaru Government Building, among others. The master clock at the Doda Kaikan was donated in spring 1926, together with one slave clock, to its predecessor, Doda Elementary School, and ten more slave clocks were donated the following year.

The clock mechanism of the clock tower of the Bunshokan, the Yamagata Prefectural Local Museum, was also developed by Hikokichi Abe. The clock tower was completed in June 1916^※1, and among clock towers still in operation it is the second oldest in Japan after the Sapporo Clock Tower. A clockmaker who is Hikokichi's grandson looks after it, winding up the weight that powers it by hand once every five days.