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In response to a few turns of the winding key once a week, the escape wheel of an ordinary mechanical clock has to make at least ten thousand turns. That ratio, about a thousand to one, could be achieved with a single gear mesh by using a wheel 20 feet in diameter engaging with a quarter inch pinion, though none but an eccentric designer of sculptural skeleton clocks would consider such a possibility. It never ceases to surprise me that the same ratio can be achieved in three meshes using gears only 2.5 inches in diameter with three of the same quarter inch pinions. It is of course the multiplicative property of gear ratios that makes a cascade of gears so effective, and there is the added advantage that intermediate arbors can be made to turn at the correct speeds for driving hour and minute hands. In a traditional regulator clock this is just what happens; the second, minute and hour hands are all on arbors of the power train.
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