Mechanical Craftsmanship - Tower Clocks

Sticking to the topic of inspiration found in mechanical madness and amazing craftsmanship, I thought I would post some random pictures of tower clock "movements".  The mechanical guts that make those hands turn on the clock dial far above your local town.  A lot of people don't think much about what's behind those big dials, but you would be surprised what kind of beautiful machines were built to tell you what time it is.

Focusing on the later 1800's and early 1900's installations, you will typical find amazing cast iron frames beautifully hand painted and filled with hand-cut brass gears.  These were typically 8-day clocks, so they would have to be wound once a week.  Some models had a bell strike train to release a hammer on a given time increment (every 15, 30, or 60 minutes) and often had a chiming mechanism to play a tune, as you may often hear in your local church.

I'm currently in-process of volunteer restoration work for one of our local clocks and will post pictures during the restoration, when possible.  In the mean time, here are some pictures for you to enjoy of various tower clock movements.

(These pictures were found on the internet by doing a Google search.  I do not claim these to be mine and if you enjoy what you see, I would encourage you to do a search to see more examples of these times pieces)