It is always great fun to take a flea market find in to Dave Abbe and listen to the history lesson. I bought this because it was interesting and still stylish enough to look nice in my house. Guys I work with travel a lot, so this piece is actually quite functional for me as well. I may have to pick up another for the office.

I found this at a vendor booth in Quartzsite AZ for $20.00. Removed the 8 screws on the case, wiped the glass with glass cleaner, lightly sanded the oak with 400 grit (the scratches were limited to the original finish), rubbed it with boiled linseed oil, polished the oxidation off the aluminum top and bottom rails on my cotton wheel with aluminum rouge... and did not touch the dial, hands or mechanism.

Notice the outer ring rotates every 24 hours to the dial rotating in 12.

The movement is powered by a main spring that is kept tight with a 1.5V D-cell powered motor. The motor is the silver can in the upper left with a worm screw coming over to the top of the main gear.

Below that is the timing lever. The tail on the adjusting lever is going over to the hair spring in the bottom left corner. You can't quite make out the balance wheel doing it's duty right behind that.

In the upper right corner you can see the motor switch. It is the white nylon block with the spring coming down to wrap around the shaft on the main gear. When the spring unwinds enough, it closes the contacts and sends power to the DC motor to turn the worm gear, wind the main gear and tension the tail of the main spring enough to open the contacts, opening the circuit to the motor. The nylon gears are never over stressed because power is cut off before the unit is over wound.

Good shot of positive battery terminal to the motor switch and of the spring coming down to the main shaft.

Looking down from the top. This thing is probably right at 50 years old and shows very little wear.

sold one similare to yours for over $350
world desk clock very nice pick.
BTW what you doing in my back yard?
JK