Previously, [Vinnie] had been stopping the clock every evening, and hoped he would remember to start the pendulum in motion 12 hours later. This was a chore, so he decided to automate the process.

[Stephen Hobley] has been experimenting with an electromagnetic pendulum in order to build himself a clock. Through the course of his experiments, he has learned quite a bit about how pendulums ...

Figure 1 shows a simplified view of this mechanism. 1 Tick tock Simplified schematic of a pendulum clock mechanism. When the pendulum swings one way (a), the escapement releases the gear attached to ...