Abe Meyer
Abe Meyer( 1901 – 1969) was an American composer of film scores.
Les Baxter
Leslie Thompson Baxter (March 14, 1922 – January 15, 1996) was an American musician and composer.
After working as an arranger and composer for swing bands, he developed his own style of easy listening music, known as exotica.
The Blood Demon
The Blood Demon( Die Schlangengrube und das Pendel in West Germany), also known as The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism, The Snake Pit and the Pendulum, and Castle of the Walking Dead, is a 1967 West German horror film directed by Harald Reinl and starring Christopher Lee, Karin Dor, and Lex Barker.
The film, written by Manfred R. Köhler, is based on Edgar Allan Poe's 1842 short story" The Pit and the Pendulum" and concerns the saga of Count Regula( Lee) who, after being drawn and quartered for murdering 12 maidens, returns to life seeking revenge.
The film was advertised in Rhode Island newspapers as Crimson Demon, due to a practice at the time of deleting the word" Blood" from film titles.
It was shot at the Bavaria Studios in Munich.
The film's sets were designed by the art directors Gabriel Pellon and Rolf Zehetbauer.
The Pit and the Pendulum (1913 film)
The Pit and the Pendulum is a three-reel film adapted from the Edgar Allan Poe short story of the same name, directed, and produced by pioneering French filmmaker Alice Guy-Blaché through her American company Solax Studios in 1913.
The Pit and the Pendulum (1991 film)
The Pit and the Pendulum( released on DVD in the United States as The Inquisitor) is a 1991 American horror film directed by Stuart Gordon and based on the eponymous short story by Edgar Allan Poe.
The film is an amalgamation of the aforementioned story with Poe's" The Cask of Amontillado", and it also appropriates the anecdote of" The Sword of Damocles", reassigning it to the character of Torquemada.
The Pit and the Pendulum (1961 film)
The Pit and the Pendulum is a 1961 horror film in Panavision and Pathe Color directed by Roger Corman, starring Vincent Price, Barbara Steele, John Kerr, and Luana Anders.
The screenplay by Richard Matheson was loosely inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's 1842 short story of the same name.
Set in sixteenth-century Spain, the story is about a young Englishman who visits a forbidding castle to investigate his sister's mysterious death.
After a series of horrific revelations, apparently ghostly appearances and violent deaths, the young man becomes strapped to the titular torture device by his lunatic brother-in-law during the film's climactic sequence.
The film was the second title in the popular series of Poe-based movies released by American International Pictures, the first having been Corman's " House of Usher" released the previous year.
Like "House", the film features widescreen cinematography by Floyd Crosby, sets designed by art director Daniel Haller, and a film score composed by Les Baxter.
A critical and box-office hit, "Pit"'s commercial success convinced AIP and Corman to continue adapting Poe stories for another six films, five of them starring Price.
The series ended in 1965 with the release of "The Tomb of Ligeia".
Film critic Tim Lucas and writer Ernesto Gastaldi have both noted the film's strong influence on numerous subsequent Italian thrillers, from Mario Bava's "The Whip and the Body" (1963) to Dario Argento's " Deep Red " (1975).
Stephen King has described one of "Pit"'s major shock sequences as being among the most important moments in the post-1960 horror film.
Tarcisio Fusco
Tarcisio Fusco was an Italian composer of film scores.
He was the brother of the composer Giovanni Fusco and the uncle of operatic soprano Cecilia Fusco.
David Robertson (engineer)
David Robertson (1875–1941) was the first Professor of Electrical Engineering at Bristol University.
Robertson had wide interests and one of these was horology – he wanted to provide the foundation of what we could call “horological engineering”, that is, a firm science-based approach to the design of accurate mechanical clocks.
He contributed a long series on the scientific foundations of precision clocks to the "Horological Journal" which was the main publication for the trade in the UK; he and his students undertook research on clocks and pendulums (some funded by the Society of Merchant Venturers); and he designed at least one notable clock, to keep University time and control the chiming of in the Wills Memorial Building from its inauguration on 1925, for which he also designed the chiming mechanism.
Today, we get accurate time from atomic clock ensembles in observatories round the world, compared and distributed by GPS satellites and over the internet, and displayed on almost any public or personal screen.
Accurate time has become ubiquitous and its maintenance a branch of information and communications technology.
A century ago none of this existed, and the world depended on the pendulum clock to keep its time, referenced to astronomical observations.
There was a scientific literature on the behaviour of pendulums and clocks; and a widespread craft-based industry making timepieces; but it could not be said that horology was a branch of engineering.
Robertson became Professor of Electrical Engineering in Merchant Venturer’s Technical College in 1902.
MVTC merged with University College Bristol when the latter was granted a Royal Charter in 1909 and became the engineering faculty of the new University of Bristol – Robertson then became the first professor of the subject in the faculty.
He served in this post until his death in 1941.
Clock-wise, the Shortt Synchronome Free Pendulum clock entered service at the Royal Observatory in 1923 and kept Greenwich, and therefore the nation’s, time until supplanted by quartz clocks in the 1940s.
Throughout Robertson’s career therefore, pendulum time was paramount.
Suppliers such as the Synchronome Company or Gents of Leicester could by 1925 have supplied perfectly satisfactory and well-proven systems to run the bell and slave clocks throughout the building.
The fact that the University chose to commission a unique and original design is a tribute perhaps to its pride in the new building and to its distinguished Professor, who was able to put into practice the principles that he had developed.
The Robertson Clock
Originally mounted in an interior foyer of the Wills Memorial Building, Robertson's clock is housed in an oak case 1753 x 837 x 310 mm (h/w/d), originally carried on stout oak “dogs” let into the masonry of an internal wall.
The case was also secured to the wall through its back, but does not support any of the mechanisms, which are separately mounted through the case back into the wall using studs.
The opening front door is fully glazed.
In its new home in Queen’s Building the original studs are re-mounted on to a large steel plate, firmly screwed to the reinforced concrete wall.
At the top of the case a clock dial displays hours and minutes as kept by the pendulum.
The dial is a standard Gents slave clock movement which is advanced by a pulse every 30s, counted down from seconds pulses generated by the pendulum.
Additional circuits in the clock once generated other half-minute pulses that controlled 3 strings of similar slave clocks throughout the building.
Right down the centre of the case is the pendulum, of the order of a metre long and with a period of 2 seconds.
It is suspended from a bracket attached to a massive iron casting bolted through to the wall, which also carries the “escapement” mechanism to the right under the face.
This drives the pendulum with a small impulse of force every second, generated by the drop of a small weight under the control of an electromagnet.
Part of the mechanism includes a 60-tooth ratchet wheel advanced on every pendulum swing by a pawl driven by the electromagnet.
Originally this operated a pair of contacts by two pins on its periphery to generate the half-minute pulses, but at some stage these contacts were removed.
To the left of the pendulum is the regulator.
This is arranged to apply a small force to the pendulum which through an ingenious linkage effectively works against gravity, slowing the pendulum down.
The force comes from a torque generated by a spiral hair-spring, one end being attached to the pivot of a lever that forms part of the escapement linkage, the other to a disk that can be rotated in small steps by a solenoid-operated “stepper motor”.
This allows the period of the pendulum to be adjusted by changing the torque, under the control of a system that compares the pendulum phase to a time standard (originally a daily pulse sent out over the telegraph network at 10.00 GMT).
Behind the pendulum and near its top is a standard aneroid barometer, and below that a mercury thermometer.
These would have been used when checking the clocks’ rate, which depends on both atmospheric temperature and pressure.
To the left of the pendulum is the Civil Time Unit (CTU).
This is essentially a clock that receives a pulse every second from the pendulum and keeps track of local time, GMT or BST depending on the season, to control the pulses sent to Great George to make it chime on the hours, 0700 through 2100 except Sundays.
The CTU was driven by its own electromagnet.
On the right is the Greenwich Time Unit (GTU), which essentially kept GMT by counting seconds impulses but also controlled the sequencing of the synchronising system around 10.00 am GMT every day.
Again, the GTU had its own electromagnet drive.
Behind the wall to which the clock was mounted there was a Control Box that housed several terminal frames, some relays, and ancillary components, that were connected to contacts on the TUs by wires going through the wall.
Most of this has now been lost.
The clock and its circuits were power by a 24 volt lead-acid battery, possibly also housed in this room.
This Control Box has also been recovered and will be installed beside the clock case to house support electronics.
The Pit and the Pendulum (2009 film)
Edgar Allan
Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum is a 2009 horror erotic thriller film directed by David DeCoteau and starring Lorielle New, Stephen Hansen and Bart Voitila.
It is retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's classic" The Pit and the Pendulum" with a new twist.
Walter Ulfig
Walter Ulfig was a German composer of film scores.

Question: When did the composer of film The Pit And The Pendulum (1961 Film) die?
Answer: January 15, 1996