We use the phrase, “like clockwork” when describing actions that occur in a timely, routine manner, not unlike time being kept by a clock. Clocks, of course, are designed with mechanisms that move with well defined precision, moving the gears and ultimately, the hands of the clock so that our seconds, minutes and hours are accurately displayed.
But what drives those gears? In classic clocks and watches, a coiled spring produces tension and must be re-wound in order to keep the timepiece running. In tall, free-standing “grandfather” clocks, it is a weight mechanism that provides the clock’s movement. Basic gravity swings the grandfather clock pendulum, making the weights drop at fixed paces. The falling weights drive the grandfather clock’s functions.
Before the introduction of electricity in lighthouses, this same clockwork mechanism was used to operate the gears that turned the lens. While a clock’s chain might be thirty-six inches or less, the rope attached to the weight in a lighthouse was several feet long and hung down the center of the lighthouse tower. When the weight reached as far as it could go (presumably to the bottom floor of the lighthouse), the keeper had to wind the clockwork mechanism again to raise the heavy weight and start the whole process over. The taller the lighthouse, the longer the rope might be. Many lighthouses had to have the mechanism wound every few hours.
An early lighthouse keeper in Minnesota is said to have slept beneath the hanging weight in order not to sleep through the onerous task of rewinding the mechanism! Can you imagine being awakened several times a night, with a hanging, 170 pound weight brushing your belly?
And we think our jobs are hard.
I always think about the poor soul that had to haul buckets of (fuel? coal? wood? don’t remember!) something all the way to the top of the lighthouses. Being a keeper always seemed glamorous until I learned about that!