First clock The first clock was built in the Cathedrale Notre-Dame of Strasbourg sometime between 1352 and 1354, the name of its maker is unknown. The first, a mechanical gilded rooster, sat as the centerpiece and is believed to be the oldest example of automata in the world. It was used as part of the second clock before being put on display at the
Strasbourg Museum for Decorative Arts in the
Palais du Rohan. This bird, a symbol of Christ's passion, was made of iron, copper, and wood. At noon it flapped its wings and spread out its feathers. It also opened its beak, put out its tongue, and by means of a bellows and a reed, crowed. In the top compartment at noon, to the sound of a small carillon, the Three Kings bowed before the figure of The Virgin Mary and the Christ Child. The clock most certainly had an astrolabe dial and a calendar dial. It was standing on the wall opposite the current clock, and a staircase led to its various levels. Supports for former balconies can still be seen today, and suggest that the height of the clock was about 18 m (59'), with a width of about 7.70 m (25') at the base. At the base a painted figure of a zodiacal man showed the relationship between the signs of the zodiac and parts of the human body. There is also a big circle engraved on the wall, but this circle is not a remnant of the first clock. It was added at a later stage, for some unclarified reason. The entire structure was dismantled in 1572–4 when the second and even more ambitious clock was mounted on the opposite wall of the south transept.
Second clock The first clock stopped working and a new one was started in the 16th century. It was designed by the mathematician
Christian Herlin. At the start of the construction, around 1547, the cathedral was under the control of the Protestants. During this time the stone case and the staircase were built along with the dial and iron framework. Work was halted a year later when the cathedral was put under Catholic control and would not resume until 1571 when the cathedral was again under the control of the Protestants. Construction of the clock resumed under the direction of
Conrad Dasypodius, a pupil of and successor to Herlin who had since passed away. Dasypodius enrolled the Swiss clockmakers
Isaac Habrecht and
Josia Habrecht, as well as the astronomer and musician David Wolckenstein, and Swiss artists
Tobias Stimmer and his brother Josias. and stood still until 1838 when
Jean-Baptiste Schwilgué (1776–1856) started to build the current clock. He designed new mechanisms to replace the old ones and which were meant to be state-of-the-art. Schwilgué had wanted to work on the clock since his boyhood, but he only got the contract 50 years later. In the meantime, he had become acquainted with clockmaking, mathematics, and mechanics. He spent one year preparing his 30 workers before actually starting construction. Then, construction lasted from 1838 until 24 June 1843. The clock, however, was inaugurated on 31 December 1842. The gold hands of the clock show
mean solar time, or "temps moyen"; the silver hands show
Central European Time, labelled "heure publique". In winter, mean solar time is approximately 30½ minutes behind Central European Time. The clock features a planetary calendar, which shows the current positions of the sun and moon, and a mechanical rooster. Every day at 12:30 the rooster crows and apostles move around the clock. This clock contains probably the first perpetual mechanical Gregorian computus, designed by Schwilgué in 1816. In the 1970s, Frédéric Klinghammer built a
reduced replica of it. ==Model==