Sharp FX-48CX Cyclometer

[Daddy-O]

Hi all,

I picked up this interesting Sharp Model FX-48CX clock radio in a job lot of clocks. There were five clocks in all including two Copal 229s in wood grain, a Lexon flip clock with a Rhythm mechanism and a GE LED clock radio. They were all advertised as not working. I was only really interested in the Copals but the others were a nice bonus. One of the 229s needed a drizzle of oil to get it going and all the other clocks seem to work fine.

The Sharp has some nice features such as a 60 minute timer for the radio and a snooze button. The radio alarm slowly increases in volume to wake you up gently and if you don't turn it off after a couple of minutes a really loud buzzer comes on which is sure to get you up. The neon lamp is still working well but the indicator light on the tuning scale is out. I took a look inside and it might be quite a job to fix. A task for another day.

[flipoclock]

Nice! I think we might have been bidding on the same lot I did not want to bid too high for the shipping is high for me, to Europe.

If you are looking to get rid of some of these clocks, including the white alarmclock and the GE clock, I might be interested, shoot me a message.

[Johan de Jong]

Nice!
Funny coincidence: yesterday I worked on a Philips 440 which I recently bought and I think I recognise the clock mechanism (the tiles and the controls for alarm and sleep timer look very familiar and the working of the alarm matches your description). https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/philips_rs440rs_44.html

It's an interesting mechanism. Not a standard cyclometer, nor a flip clock, but something else. Each wheel has flat tiles, but the tiles for the minutes and the hours are used on both sides.

• The minutes wheel has 5 tiles with numbers 0-4 on one side and 5-9 on the other side.
• The tens of minutes wheel has 6 tiles 0-5 and the other side is not used.
• The hours wheel has tiles with 1-6 on one side and 7-12 on the other side.

When the tiles are at the back of the clock, out of sight, they are flipped upside down to present the other side.
By this clever trick it has fewer but larger tiles than a normal cyclometer.

Is there a name for this mechanism?