AN IMPROVEMENT OR IMPROVEMENTS ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF CLOCKS AND OTHER TIMEKEEPERS, WHEREBY THEY ARE RENDERED OF MUCH GREATER UTILITY AND SERVICE BOTH BY LAND AND SEA, DENOMINATED NOCTURNAL OR NIGHT CLOCKS, AS ALSO IN THE DIAL. PLATES OF CLOCKS, WATCHES, AND OTHER TIMEKEEPERS MADE ON AN ENTIRE NEW PLAN
Year: 1805

page_text: SPECIFICATION of the Patent granted to George Alexander Bond, of Hatton
Garden, in the Parish of Saint Andrew, Holborn, in the County of
Middlesex, Gentleman, for "AN IMPROVEMENT OR IMPROVEMENTS ON THE
CONSTRUCTION OF CLOCKS AND OTHER TIMEKEEPERS, WHEREBY THEY ARE
RENDERED OF MUCH GREATER UTILITY AND SERVICE BOTH BY LAND AND SEA,
DENOMINATED NOCTURNAL OR NIGHT CLOCKS, AS ALSO IN THE DIAL. PLATES OF
CLOCKS, WATCHES, AND OTHER TIMEKEEPERS MADE ON AN ENTIRE NEW PLAN,"
with Drawings.
TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, I, GEORGE
ALEXANDER BOND, of Hatton Garden, in the Parish of Saint Andrew, Holborn,
in the County of Middlesex, Gentleman, send greeting.
WHEREAS His present most Excellent Majesty King George the Third
lid, by His Royal Letters Patent under the Great Seal of the United King-
dom of Great Britain and Ireland, bearing date at Westminster, the Twenty-
sixth day of March, in the forty-fifth year of His reign, give and grant unto
ne, the said George Alexander Bond, my executors, administrators, and
assigns, His special licence, full power, sole privilege and authority, that I, the
said George Alexander Bond, my executors, administrators, and assigns, during
he term of years therein expressed, should and lawfully might make, use,
exercise, and vend my Invention of "CERTAIN IMPROVEMENTS ON THE CONSTRUC-
TION OF CLOCKS AND OTHER TIMEPIECES, (WHEREBY THEY ARE RENDERED OF MUCH
GREATER UTILITY AND SERVICE BOTH BY SEA AND LAND THAN ANY HERETOFORE
JADE USE OF)," within England, Wales, and the Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed,
u such manner as to me, the said George Alexander Bond, my executors,

page_text: administrators, and assigns, should in my or their direction seem meet; in
which said Letters Patent is contained a proviso, that if I, the said George
Alexander Bond, should not particularly describe and ascertain the nature of
my said Invention, and in what manner the same is to be performed, by an
instrument in writing under my hand and seal, and cause the same to be
inrolled in His Majesty's High Court of Chancery within one calendar month
next and immediately after the date of the said Letters Patent, that then
the said Letters Patent, and all liberties and advantages whatsoever thereby
granted, should utterly cease, determine, and become void, as in and by the
said recited Letters Patent, relation being thereunto had, may more fully and
at large appear.
NOW KNOW YE, that in compliance with the said proviso, I, the said
George Alexander Bond, do hereby declare that the principal objects of my
Invention are as follow:-
My method of improving the utility of clocks, watches, or timekeepers in
general, is by making the dial plate on which the hours are marked of some
transparent or demi-transparent substance, so that the letters and figures, as
well as the hands that point to the hour and minutes, not being transparent
but opaque, and a light placed behind the hour, may be known during the
night, or in a dark room. I have various ways of constructing clocks, so
that the wheels or mechanical part of them may not interrupt the light from
striking upon the back of the dial plate, so as to pass through and shew the
Lour.
Figure 1st shews the first view of a table or spring clock, supposed to
be standing on a chimney piece. In this clock the dial plate is advanced so
far before the wheels or movement part, by means of the axles on which they
are fixed being long, that there may be room for placing a lamp or candle
between the works and the dial plate, so that the light may go through without
interruption. A is the dial plate; B, the box in which are the movements;
C, the long axle on which are fixed the handles or hands; D, the candle,
candles, or lamp, double or single.
Figure 2nd is a side view of a clock of the same nature and use, but
differently constructed, in which the works or movement are so much smaller
than the dial plate, that the hours and minutes and the two hands that point
to them can be seen beyond the case in which they are contained, as represented
by Figure 3rd, which is the front view of a dial plate, with a small movement
of the sort represented in Figure 2d. The part stained of a pale red is sup-
posed to be penetrated by the light; the dark part in the middle is covered
by the movement.

page_text: Figure 4th is another manner in which the movement or wheels, in which
D is the box containing the movement, which may be either placed above,
or below, or at one side of the dial plate, so that the light may shine through,
the handles being turned by the axles A and B at right angles to each other,
the same as if the movements were directly behind the dial plate.
Figure 5th is a view of a double lamp or candlestick, which I recommend
the use of in No. 1, that the light may not be either immediately under or on
one side only, of the axis on which are the hands.
These clocks are intended to be covered with a case to prevent the light
spreading over the apartment, but this is a matter of choice and not necessary,
though to people who do not wish for light in their bed-room it will be most
agreeable, for the hour will be seen though the light is not excluded from the
whole apartment, provided the lamp or candle is behind the dial plate. Time-
keepers of this sort may be so constructed as to be placed or fixed in a window
shutter, or in a door, or over a door, or, in one word, in any situation to tell
the hour in a dark apartment, the light being behind, whether candle-light,
lamp-light, or day-light; my general principle being the transparency or degree
of transparency in the dial plate necessary for shewing the hour by the light
shining through.
This improvement on the utility of clocks, by which they will shew the
hour by night as well as by day, is applicable to clocks of steeples belonging
to churches or other public buildings, as well as to table clocks or eight-day
house clocks, whether they go with a spring, or weights, or with a pendulum,
or balance wheel, or whether in great or in small.
The substances of which I make my dial plates are glass of all sorts, clear
or coloured, ground or unground, enamel, china, or porcelain, talk, born, paper,
silk, marble, ivory, or alabaster; or, as before said, of any substance trans-
parent or demi-transparent, so as to let sufficient light pass through to shew
the hour, so that, provided it has that quality, the substance is not material.
Besides the transparent dial plates above specified, made of glass or other
substances that admit a passage for the light, I also have a new method of
making or manufacturing enamelled dials for clocks and watches, by which the
polish and smoothness of surface and general appearance is highly improved, in
the following manner; for whereas dials, or dial plates, as they are called, are
made of enamel on a plate of metal by melting or fusion, so that they adhere to
the plate, covering it with a thin coat of enamel, too thin to admit of being
ground and polished, besides being liable to crack in process of time by by the
constant expansion and contraction of two thin substances, the one of metal
and the other of a vitrifaction, so closely united and unequally operated upon

page_text: by heat and cold. To remedy both these evils, I make my enamelled plate a
sheet of enamel or glass by itself, not upon any metallic plate, and of sufficient
thickness to admit of grinding and polishing perfectly smooth and flatt, like as
mirrors and looking-glass plates are polished, or as convex or concave optical
glasses are ground and polished, so that the surface instead of having those
little roughnesses, or that deviation from perfect form that all vitrifactions
are more or less liable to when the outward surface remains, become mathe-
inatically true in point of form, and smooth in point of surface. My plates of
enamel or glass being so made and polished, are then fixed on metal plates by
means of gum, or cement, or any glutinous substance such as takes hold of the
impenetrable and smooth surfaces of glass and metal, or by means of setting
them by turning over the edge of the metal, as in jewellery, and thereby fixing
them together, so as to keep them perfectly in place and connected, but
yet not quite so closely as by the mode now practised, where the enamel
is fluxed or melted on the metalic plate, which, as has already been de-
scribed, occasions injury by expansion; also dial plates for wheel barometers,
watch, or pocket compass, &c., done in the same manner.. My Invention
in this latter case is not tending to dials or dial plates of clocks and watches
cheaper or more easily manufactured, but to make them more perfect in
their form and polish where fine work is wanted; as, in the other case, my
improvement has the effect of rendering those useful machines still more
serviceable than heretofore by making them tell the time with equal facility
and exactness by night as they now do by day.