Jolly Jumper and Grandfather Clock

As a grandfather, I see the swinging pendulum of my grandfather clock and my grandson on his jolly jumper. I am enjoying the sounds of happy chortles and the tick-tocks of the clock. My eye glasses are safe from destruction on my nose, my stomach is not beginning punched, and I am about to drift into sleep. But the thought of my grandson swinging on the pendulum clock when he starts to walk keeps my eyes from closing. Next I think, what is the connection between a ‘grandfather clock’ and ‘jolly jumper’. Well the first is that both work on the basis of falling weights. The falling weight of a pendulum produces energy to function the clock. The falling weight of baby Archer creates energy from a spring to rebound him skyward. Great advice: Its is better to use the grandfather clock as a timing device, than calculate by the rebounds of Archer.

Both use gravity to produce energy and both are inventions. It was a ‘first nations’ Canadian woman by the name of Olivia Poole who invented the ‘jolly jumper’. When her first born was six months old she remembered how her elders had calmed and entertained their children. They swaddled them in baskets and suspended them from tips of tree branches. Wind, weight, movement of child, and the spring of the branch did the rest. Olivia used that memory to create the modern ‘jolly jumper’ and became the first ‘indigenous’ woman in Canada to patent an invention and, ‘voila’ the jumps and chortles began.

The pendulum clock was invented by the Dutchman Christian Huygens in 1656, but was first produced as long clocks in Britain by Ahasuerus Fromenteel. The tick-tocks began. Thanks to those thoughts I am still wide awake.