Andre Romain Guilmet, France, c.1900.

Time movement gravity driven by weight of balls, retrieving buckets by spring. Half-second, Ellicott compensated pendulum, Brocot escapement. Thermometer and barometer. Movement mounted to green onyx base.

Originally shown in the Exposition Universelle of 1900 and is described and illustrated by Mathieu Planchon in La Revue Chonometrique for October of that year. See illustration below.

It is meant to represent an 'overshot waterwheel' design where water from a river was diverted through a flume to the top of the waterwheel to provide power to a manufactory that used the energy from the water wheel to power their operations. This is one of many examples of French "Industrial Novelty" clocks made at the time to illustrate various machinery that became part of the culture of the time, including steam boilers, railroad engines, submarines, stamping machines, automobiles, and many other industrial animations. These also extended to other examples as the deck of a ship, printing presses, hot air balloons and flying biplanes. The common theme being that a clock was always present. Most of these had automated features that only operated when were actuated by the observer. The example illustrated here is a bit different in that the specialty motion is constant and a part of the operation of the novelty clock.

These videos is of one of many novelty, or what are also called 'industrial' clocks made in France around the turn of the century. This example is of an overshot waterwheel. A spring drive moves the bucket chain forward to deposit a ball onto the waterwheel and is synchronized with the clock through a cam lever. The weight of the balls on the right-hand perimeter of the water wheel drives the clock. This arrangement produces a fairly accurate gravity driven power source for the clock. At the 4 o'clock position of the waterwheel a ball is released just after one is deposited at the top from the bucket chain and rolls down a set of three inclined ramps to be deposited into the bucket chain at its base.