Here is my review which appeared in the October Bulletin:
The Clockmaker Rasmus Sornes
by
Tor Sornes
Edited and published by The Borgarsyssel Museum, Sarpsborg, Norway, 2008
HB 7 in. (18 cm) X 9 5/8 in. (25.4 cm)
144 acid-free calendared pp., incl. Table of Contents, Forward, Introduction, Prologue, 129 pp. text, diagrams, technical drawings, many color and BW photos, and genealogical table, and 4 pp. appendix of mostly astronomical terms.
Available from the Borgarsyssel Museum or the NAWCC Gift Shop for $29.95
Rasmus Sornes (1893-1967), Norwegian clockmaker, perhaps needs some introduction He was a mostly self taught inventor and clockmaker, best known for his construction of four astronomical table clocks, built to rival the most complex clocks in the world. The last, and most evolved of these, was in the Rockford, Ill, Time Museum collection. It ranks as one of the most advanced clocks ever made.
This book, by Rasmus’ son, Tor Sornes, may be divided into two sections. The first consists of family recollections of the life of the clockmaker, and is by far the more entertaining. Although the author is not a native English speaker, and probably exhibits a certain Scandinavian reserve, his warmth, humanity, and love for his subject shine through. And what a subject it is! Rasmus Sornes belongs to that class of men, like John Harrison and David Rittenhouse, whose native genius could never be extinguished, despite ill-starred adversities and impediments.
Born into a poor but ancient farm family in rural Norway, he had limited educational opportunities (school only every other day). Although he attained good grades, he treated attendance casually, preferring to work on his machines and inventions. These were the wonder of the neighborhood; they included a self regulating pump to water the livestock, a tractor made from an old car, a steam engine for a small boat, a milk separator, hydroelectric power for a nearby farmer, and an automatic incubator - which turned the eggs! All of this was made with self-built equipment.
After finishing grade school, he tried to find a spot as a watchmaker’s apprentice but was rebuffed everywhere. This he attributed to a prejudice against farm boys as being clumsy and stupid. Perhaps this resentment, which rankled him for life, was the impetus for his horological achievements. Later in life, he had the satisfaction of hosting yearly visits from the graduating classes of the Oslo watchmaking school, to allow the students to wonder at his mechanical expertise.
But perhaps those old watchmakers were right, in a way - a simple apprenticeship was not for Rasmus. He spent several restless years trying out vocations: a bicycle factory hand; a mechanics workshop helper; a stint at the Stavanger Electric Works; he ran a farm equipment workshop: but he still invented, e.g., a hay transport device. With a certificate from the Stavanger Technical Institute, he became an electrical fitter, then an engineer for the Jorpeland Power Station. All this by age 21!
He became interested in photography, astronomy, and radio. This last led to a job in 1921 with a ship-to-shore radio relay station. In 1922 he started a radio broadcast station, perhaps Norway’s first, in his home. This only operated for about a year, before the local electric company had it closed. - they feared it was leaching off all their power into the air!
In 1931, he moved his young family to the island of Jeloy, where his employer was building a new radio station. Rasmus built himself a new house, bristling with antenna wires and strange devices, such as a rotating irrigation cannon on the roof, for the surrounding gardens. This was liable to soak unwary visitors, or forgetful occupants! Another of those devices was a large telescope (the second largest in Norway). During the April 1940 surprise invasion of neutral Norway by the Nazis, the neighbors asked Rasmus to remove it, as they feared it would be thought a gun and bring bombs down upon the area.
Under the Nazi occupation, Rasmus was apparently involved with the Resistance. Evidence of this is a secret radio he built, disguised as a functioning voltmeter, now in the Oslo technical museum. Possession of this during the occupation was a capital offence.
This section of the book contains many entertaining anecdotes, which also throw light on aspects of those desperate times, and how people coped with them. For example, Tor explains that in that time, most shoes were made of fish skin, which couldn’t have worn very well. Rasmus made shoes for his children of discarded auto tires, which embarrassed them - after all, wasn’t it strange enough to be the offspring of the village wizard?
But my favorite story is about how Rasmus put a lens in the door of the outhouse, thus converting it into a camera obscura. A perfect, albeit inverted, moving image of the main house, and everything around it, was projected on the inside wall.
The second section of the book is about the four clocks which Rasmus began in 1935. Tor does not reveal, nor speculate upon, the origins of his father’s great obsession. One might wonder if he had any contact with Jens Olsen, the Danish maker of another great Scandinavian astronomical clock. Olsen was a generation ahead of Rasmus, having been born in 1872, and must have completed his apprenticeship when Rasmus was born in 1893. Although Olsen’s plans were complete by 1922, his clock’s construction was not commenced until 1944, nor finished until 1955. So it is not likely that Olsen was a source either of inspiration or information for Rasmus. Tor dismisses Olsen’s clock as almost “a factory made product,” because it was built in a workshop at the Danish Technological Institute. He does admit Rasmus’ debt to Schwilgue’s Strasbourg clock, but perhaps does not realize that this clock also was made by a large team of workmen. In fact, even in his own time, Rasmus Sornes was an anomaly, a throwback to the time when men like himself were able to complete such works wholly on their own.
Possibly Tor is also not aware that Schwilgue’s masterpiece was also Rasmus’ technical model. The complex mechanism which computes the subtle deviationss of the moon’s orbit from the simple ideal (the anomaly, the variation, and the evection), was insofar as I have been able to determine, invented by Schwilgue. This device consists of concentric vertical cylindrical cams, one above the other, and riding on each other, such that the effects are additive. This was used as input to Schwilgue’s computus, the mechanical computer which calculates the date of Easter. Schwilgue’s solution to this problem was the first successful attempt in centuries. How Rasmus learned of this is a mystery. Olsen made a pilgrimage to Strasbourg around 1900, but was annoyed to find that the great clock was only shown for one hour a day, and that the important mechanisms were concealed under a green cloth. To see the mechanism, he finally resorted to hiding under the cloth! So far as we are told, Rasmus never journeyed to Strasbourg, and it’s not likely that he learned the secrets of Olsen’s masterpiece before it was even built.
However that may have come to be, Tor does not hold back in revealing the innermost workings of his father’s chef d’oeuvre. The book is larded with reproductions of the original drawings, labeled in Norwegian, but with English translations and captions. A creditable, if non-mathematical, job is done of explaining the complexities of astronomical clock design - perhaps the best job in English. Most of the drawings include tooth counts, the result, no doubt, of long hours of hand computation in the days before electronic computers or even calculators.
Rasmus experimented for fifteen years with his own electromagnetic chronometer escapement, but he eventually (after clocks 1 and 2) reverted to a seconds weight- driven Invar pendulum with an electric remontoire, which provides correction to the normal synchronous motor drive. Thus, though electrically powered, the clocks are under total mechanical control. The chronometer escapement is not described - perhaps Tor will grant us a paper on that subject someday.
This book is important because it documents some of the world’s greatest clocks, and the independent genius who made them. It belongs in the library of every serious horological book collector. It should be read by all who have an interest in advanced horology, or in the social history of early 20th century Scandinavia. Highly recommended!
Bill Ward
The Clockmaker Rasmus Sornes
by
Tor Sornes
Edited and published by The Borgarsyssel Museum, Sarpsborg, Norway, 2008
HB 7 in. (18 cm) X 9 5/8 in. (25.4 cm)
144 acid-free calendared pp., incl. Table of Contents, Forward, Introduction, Prologue, 129 pp. text, diagrams, technical drawings, many color and BW photos, and genealogical table, and 4 pp. appendix of mostly astronomical terms.
Available from the Borgarsyssel Museum or the NAWCC Gift Shop for $29.95
Rasmus Sornes (1893-1967), Norwegian clockmaker, perhaps needs some introduction He was a mostly self taught inventor and clockmaker, best known for his construction of four astronomical table clocks, built to rival the most complex clocks in the world. The last, and most evolved of these, was in the Rockford, Ill, Time Museum collection. It ranks as one of the most advanced clocks ever made.
This book, by Rasmus’ son, Tor Sornes, may be divided into two sections. The first consists of family recollections of the life of the clockmaker, and is by far the more entertaining. Although the author is not a native English speaker, and probably exhibits a certain Scandinavian reserve, his warmth, humanity, and love for his subject shine through. And what a subject it is! Rasmus Sornes belongs to that class of men, like John Harrison and David Rittenhouse, whose native genius could never be extinguished, despite ill-starred adversities and impediments.
Born into a poor but ancient farm family in rural Norway, he had limited educational opportunities (school only every other day). Although he attained good grades, he treated attendance casually, preferring to work on his machines and inventions. These were the wonder of the neighborhood; they included a self regulating pump to water the livestock, a tractor made from an old car, a steam engine for a small boat, a milk separator, hydroelectric power for a nearby farmer, and an automatic incubator - which turned the eggs! All of this was made with self-built equipment.
After finishing grade school, he tried to find a spot as a watchmaker’s apprentice but was rebuffed everywhere. This he attributed to a prejudice against farm boys as being clumsy and stupid. Perhaps this resentment, which rankled him for life, was the impetus for his horological achievements. Later in life, he had the satisfaction of hosting yearly visits from the graduating classes of the Oslo watchmaking school, to allow the students to wonder at his mechanical expertise.
But perhaps those old watchmakers were right, in a way - a simple apprenticeship was not for Rasmus. He spent several restless years trying out vocations: a bicycle factory hand; a mechanics workshop helper; a stint at the Stavanger Electric Works; he ran a farm equipment workshop: but he still invented, e.g., a hay transport device. With a certificate from the Stavanger Technical Institute, he became an electrical fitter, then an engineer for the Jorpeland Power Station. All this by age 21!
He became interested in photography, astronomy, and radio. This last led to a job in 1921 with a ship-to-shore radio relay station. In 1922 he started a radio broadcast station, perhaps Norway’s first, in his home. This only operated for about a year, before the local electric company had it closed. - they feared it was leaching off all their power into the air!
In 1931, he moved his young family to the island of Jeloy, where his employer was building a new radio station. Rasmus built himself a new house, bristling with antenna wires and strange devices, such as a rotating irrigation cannon on the roof, for the surrounding gardens. This was liable to soak unwary visitors, or forgetful occupants! Another of those devices was a large telescope (the second largest in Norway). During the April 1940 surprise invasion of neutral Norway by the Nazis, the neighbors asked Rasmus to remove it, as they feared it would be thought a gun and bring bombs down upon the area.
Under the Nazi occupation, Rasmus was apparently involved with the Resistance. Evidence of this is a secret radio he built, disguised as a functioning voltmeter, now in the Oslo technical museum. Possession of this during the occupation was a capital offence.
This section of the book contains many entertaining anecdotes, which also throw light on aspects of those desperate times, and how people coped with them. For example, Tor explains that in that time, most shoes were made of fish skin, which couldn’t have worn very well. Rasmus made shoes for his children of discarded auto tires, which embarrassed them - after all, wasn’t it strange enough to be the offspring of the village wizard?
But my favorite story is about how Rasmus put a lens in the door of the outhouse, thus converting it into a camera obscura. A perfect, albeit inverted, moving image of the main house, and everything around it, was projected on the inside wall.
The second section of the book is about the four clocks which Rasmus began in 1935. Tor does not reveal, nor speculate upon, the origins of his father’s great obsession. One might wonder if he had any contact with Jens Olsen, the Danish maker of another great Scandinavian astronomical clock. Olsen was a generation ahead of Rasmus, having been born in 1872, and must have completed his apprenticeship when Rasmus was born in 1893. Although Olsen’s plans were complete by 1922, his clock’s construction was not commenced until 1944, nor finished until 1955. So it is not likely that Olsen was a source either of inspiration or information for Rasmus. Tor dismisses Olsen’s clock as almost “a factory made product,” because it was built in a workshop at the Danish Technological Institute. He does admit Rasmus’ debt to Schwilgue’s Strasbourg clock, but perhaps does not realize that this clock also was made by a large team of workmen. In fact, even in his own time, Rasmus Sornes was an anomaly, a throwback to the time when men like himself were able to complete such works wholly on their own.
Possibly Tor is also not aware that Schwilgue’s masterpiece was also Rasmus’ technical model. The complex mechanism which computes the subtle deviationss of the moon’s orbit from the simple ideal (the anomaly, the variation, and the evection), was insofar as I have been able to determine, invented by Schwilgue. This device consists of concentric vertical cylindrical cams, one above the other, and riding on each other, such that the effects are additive. This was used as input to Schwilgue’s computus, the mechanical computer which calculates the date of Easter. Schwilgue’s solution to this problem was the first successful attempt in centuries. How Rasmus learned of this is a mystery. Olsen made a pilgrimage to Strasbourg around 1900, but was annoyed to find that the great clock was only shown for one hour a day, and that the important mechanisms were concealed under a green cloth. To see the mechanism, he finally resorted to hiding under the cloth! So far as we are told, Rasmus never journeyed to Strasbourg, and it’s not likely that he learned the secrets of Olsen’s masterpiece before it was even built.
However that may have come to be, Tor does not hold back in revealing the innermost workings of his father’s chef d’oeuvre. The book is larded with reproductions of the original drawings, labeled in Norwegian, but with English translations and captions. A creditable, if non-mathematical, job is done of explaining the complexities of astronomical clock design - perhaps the best job in English. Most of the drawings include tooth counts, the result, no doubt, of long hours of hand computation in the days before electronic computers or even calculators.
Rasmus experimented for fifteen years with his own electromagnetic chronometer escapement, but he eventually (after clocks 1 and 2) reverted to a seconds weight- driven Invar pendulum with an electric remontoire, which provides correction to the normal synchronous motor drive. Thus, though electrically powered, the clocks are under total mechanical control. The chronometer escapement is not described - perhaps Tor will grant us a paper on that subject someday.
This book is important because it documents some of the world’s greatest clocks, and the independent genius who made them. It belongs in the library of every serious horological book collector. It should be read by all who have an interest in advanced horology, or in the social history of early 20th century Scandinavia. Highly recommended!
Bill Ward
Last edited by a moderator:
