{"id":242909,"date":"2010-01-28T15:03:19","date_gmt":"2010-01-28T20:03:19","guid":{"rendered":"1755 at http:\/\/atlasobscura.com"},"modified":"2010-01-28T15:03:19","modified_gmt":"2010-01-28T20:03:19","slug":"steam-clock-gastown-vancouver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/242909","title":{"rendered":"Steam Clock Gastown Vancouver"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vancouver<\/a>, Canada<\/a> | Astounding Timepieces<\/a><\/p>\n

Underneath Vancouver, Canada there runs a series of steam tunnels, with some of the tunnels apparently large enough to walk in. Running under major streets (cordova, water, cambie and maybe abbot) you can look down onto these tunnels through large grates in the sidewalk.<\/p>\n

It is these steam tunnels, which heat much of downtown Vancouver, which power the steam clock, one of the world’s few functioning steam clocks. Despite seeming like a remnant of the Victorian age and being located in Vancouver’s “Gastown” which was indeed the rough and tumble downtown area of Vancouver in the 1870s, the Steam clock is actually from a hundred years later, built in 1977 by horologist Raymond Saunders.<\/p>\n

Saunders was hired by Gastown’s local merchants to build the clock as a monument. It also had an alternative purpose, built over a steam grate, above one of the aforementioned tunnels, it kept local homeless from sleeping on the warm spot. The clock is likely only the second steam clock ever constructed, the first having been built by John Inshaw in 1859 when Inshaw operated the Steam Clock tavern to show off his steam powered inventions. <\/p>\n

Because Inshaw’s clock was long ago lost, Saunders had to reinvent the steam clock from scratch, and though he did have the aid of old blueprints the first version was faulty. After raising more money to repair it, today the clock works perfectly. Saying the clock is steam powered is a bit of a misnomer, as the clock itself is powered by descending weights. The mini-steam engine in its base of the clock takes up the role of the human “winder” by raising a series of ball weights and delivering the weights to the clock drive train. <\/p>\n

Every quarter hour, the two ton Steam Clock shows off a bit, whistling and shooting steam from its top. There are less than six other working Steam Clocks in the world.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vancouver, Canada | Astounding Timepieces Underneath Vancouver, Canada there runs a series of steam tunnels, with some of the tunnels apparently large enough to walk in. Running under major streets (cordova, water, cambie and maybe abbot) you can look down onto these tunnels through large grates in the sidewalk. It is these steam tunnels, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242909\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}