page_title: Eugène Farcot
section_title: The largest conical pendulum clock
hierarchical_section_title: Eugène Farcot / The largest conical pendulum clock
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo by E. Neurdein showing a monumental conical pendulum clock by E. Farcot, located at the Galerie d'Iéna in the Palais-du-Chanp-de-Mars.
context_page_description: Henri-Eugène-Adrien Farcot was a French clock-maker, industrialist, inventor, mechanical-engineer, aeronaut, occasional writer and one of the most celebrated conical pendulum clock makers.
  In 1853 he established the Manufacture d’horlogerie E. Farcot with headquarters, from 1855, in rue des Trois-Bornes, 39, Paris, wherein he worked until his retirement in the late 1880s, same as the successors, his son-in-law the Belgian Henri-Charles Wandenberg, or Vandenberg, until December 1903 and Paul Grenon until 1914. Between October 1855-March 1856 the company's name changed to Farcot et Cie, and in 1887 it was renamed Farcot et Wandenberg, although the partnership was officially constituted in April 1890.
  Throughout his career path, Eugène Farcot was awarded with one honorable mention and four medals in the following expositions: Besançon 1860, London 1862, Paris, as well as Henri Wandenberg, both with a silver medal in Paris 1889 and a gold medal in Paris 1900.
  In addition to clock-making, he was a member of the Société aérostatique et météorologique de France and the also defunct Chambre syndicale d'horlogerie de Paris.
context_section_description: In 1878, the largest conical pendulum clock ever built was erected in the missing Palais du Champ-de-Mars on the occasion of the Paris Exposition universelle internationale. It was his ultimate contribution to the conical pendulum clock, a type of timepiece not invented by the Frenchman, but that he brought to a new level of sophistication and engineering. Not to mention that he also helped to its popularization offering affordable mantel models, some with a patent of invention.
  The mechanical marvel was reviewed in several publications, next are included three of them:
  Review 1: The largest pendulum in the Exhibition is the revolving one above the large clock made by Farcot. The pendulum [25 m long] is suspended from the roof [34 m high] of the building, performs six revolutions in a minute, and is made in conformity with Foucault’s method. The large gilt ball which serves for the bob, about 2 feet in diameter, must be subject to considerable disturbance from the wind, for being just opposite the main entrance it is in a very draughty position.
  Review 2: In the middle of the noble space under the entrance tower, stood the Monumental Clock, constructed by M. Eugène Farcot, inmense in size, elaborate in design, and almost equalling as a wonder, though falling very far short in elaboration, the celebrated Clock of Strasbourg. It was of about twenty-two and a half feet in height, with four faces, rich though chaste in ornamentation; and the motion was communicated by a pendulum more than one hundred feet in length, suspended from the centre of the dome above, with a terrestrial globe of some four feet in diameter at the end, oscillating in about ten seconds, and acting upon a needle, invisible, like all the other mechanism. The lower portion had elaborate bas-reliefs in bronze with caryatides of the seasons at the corners; and it was surrounded, at a distance marking the limits of the central pavilion, by a circle of statues virtually forming a guard of honor for the central mechanical curiosity of the exhibition.
  Review 3 (translated from the French): In the middle of the Palais du Champ-de-Mars vestibule of honor, beneath the grand central dome, a monumental clock, work of the skilled mechanical-horologist Mr. Eugène Farcot, attracts keen admiration.
  This is a real monument, over 7 meters high, composed of a plinth ornamented with bas-reliefs representing the attributes of arts and industry, at each of whose four corners stand two-meter-high bronze caryatids supporting a pedimented turret. The clock sits in the center, with its four 1 meter 25 diameter dial faces.
  As a pendulum, a 1 m. 25 diameter metallic ball, weighing around 100 kilograms, representing the earth, with its continents and islands emerging in gilt relief against a blue sea background. This globe, encircled by a gilt ring bearing, also in relief, the signs of the zodiac, is suspended from the center of the dome, 2 meters above the clock, connected to its invisible movement by a needle. This pendulum rotates, under its own weight, around a simulated sun at the centre of the circle it describes, which extends approximately 15 meters. It accomplishes this progression in 10 seconds.
  The clock "runs by itself"; the spontaneous undulations of this enormous pendulum obey natural laws too well known to require explanation; however some visitors seemed very intrigued and very curious to know where was the "little beast" that moves the entire device. — They were, of course, a tiny minority.
caption: The piece at the Galerie d'Iéna, one of the main exhibition pavilions in the Palais du Champ-de-Mars at the Paris world fair of 1878.
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