More on snooze alarms...
What I didn't do was take the next logical step in the snooz
alarm debate which seems so obvious now. The alarm clock's
gears were standardized and the same in every alarm clock of the
period. The snooze gear was introduced into the mix and its
teeth had to mesh with the pre-existing time-set
gear's teeth. Given this, adding one more tooth,
would have increased the time to over ten minutes. I'm sure
the engineers at Telechron didn't want angry letters from folks
who were allowed to snooz for MORE THAN TEN minutes and went with
the nine teeth instead of ten. This would guarantee at
least nine but not more than ten minutes of snoozing.
Best wishes to the Teeming Millions,
Pappy
Explanation of the pictures: (click the links to see them)
Snoozmovie.mpg Short film showing the snooze mechanism at work.
Arm.jpg blue arrow shows buzzer arm that makes all the noise.
red arrow shows prevent arm that extends from the snooz
gear to buy you some more
sack time
Timing.jpg turquoise
arrow shows time-set gear
yellow arrow show minute gear (separated from time-set gear
but they mesh in
working clock)
red arrow shows
snooze gear with 9 teeth. Once the time-set gear passes the
9th
tooth, the snooze gear swings up and
the buzzer is allowed to buzz away.