Very little is known about Smith. For instance, nothing is known with certainty of his formal education, with respect to which schools he attended, who his teachers were, what grades he scored, and so on. Though a resident of Sydney for all of his life, neither the only local university available to him, Sydney University, nor the only technical college, Sydney Technical College, have a record of Smith being a student, and his dubious and often repeated claims of having worked at the famous Tiffany & Co jewellers in New York, and remarkably as being an F.R.S.(Fellow of the Royal Society, London), add to the persona of the enigmatic Smith.
Having never been to see the ancient clock in the city of Strasbourg, he nevertheless gained sufficient information about the clock through his private reading (and the possible sighting of another model on display in Sydney prior to his own reconstruction), that allowed him to start making his model on Australia Day in 1887. By 1889, and with considerable help from other craftsmen, Smith was keen for his model to be given to a public institution for permanent display. So he approached several senior government bureaucrats and politicians directly, with a view to offering his clock to the Technological Museum (an early name for the Powerhouse Museum). After a little haggling, Smith sold his model to the Museum for 700 pounds, and the clock has remained with the Museum ever since, delighting and annoying generations of visitors and Museum staff alike.
Originally, the clock was fully mechanical, with all the major time-keeping and astronomical functions controlled by the three-legged gravity escapement mechanism. This device has now been replaced, with over a century of wear-and-tear contributing to the demise of the escapement. Nevertheless, the escapement, which has been retained in the Museum’s collection, shows a remarkable level of thought and design in regard to the fine engineering of the anchor, impulse and locking pallets and roller, and the general ability to secure uniform movement through which periodic impulses are imparted to the balance wheel, to keep it in constant oscillation, all with assistance of weights and springs. And as Smith’s model is also substantially an astronomical clock, the calculations of orbital times of the planets around the Sun and their application to a mechanical clock-work movement, required a level of understanding that could not be easily acquired by a clockmaker working in late nineteenth-century Sydney.
Smith died, aged 80, on 28 August 1942. His body was discovered in Hickey’s Chambers, a modest dwelling located at the juncture of Oxford and Pelican Streets, Sydney. His father was a fruit merchant, but the interests of his mother remain unknown. Smith married Kathleen Downs, of whom little is known. Smith and his wife conceived four children, two boys and two girls. Two of his children, a boy and a girl, pre-deceased him. Smith’s greatest legacy, his model of the ancient Strasbourg Clock, continues to delight visitors to the Powerhouse Museum.
- Writers:
-
fishel
- Date written:
- 2012
- Last updated:
- 2012
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