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Frank, I am glad to admit when I am bested and proved wrong. 

But here is the contemporary illustration of the time of his famous time piece –

Looks a little ornate to my simple tastes in bedside clocks, but I cannot account for the tastes and styles of Slocum’s time.  For the $1 as it is said to have cost it might have been a bedside clock or it might have adorned his simple cottage over the mantle. 

Simple people make simple things elegant. 

Sextants even in his day might have been much more in cost than the clock.  It stands to figure, both are precise and complicated instruments to measure angles and time, but where one is mass produced as in the case of a $1 clock, the other is produced with precision and exacting care.  As true nautical chronometers are boxed and gimbaled to protect the precise inner workings of the nautical chronometer.   It is why the sextant is ideally stored in a very safe box, Tamaya uses a space age high impact type, but a well-made, interlocking, dovetail jointed box and the sextant is held firmly in place with a bar of some sort.  It is also why a strap is there to support the weight of the sextant lest it be dropped. 

Peace. 

Rommel John Miller

8679 Island Pointe Drive

Hebron, MD  21830-1093