A public clock

Source A: an original contemporary non-fiction-style account.

When the clock above our town hall stopped, most people noticed because it was wrong, not because they needed it. Phones supplied the time more reliably, and several shops displayed it too. The hands remained at twenty past two for a fortnight. I passed them on my way to work and felt an irritation out of proportion to any practical inconvenience. A large clock ought to move. Its stillness seemed to accuse the town of having forgotten an ordinary duty.

Then a notice appeared explaining that a replacement part had to be made. The clock was old, and the repair required work that could not be ordered for next-day delivery. I began to find its fixed expression less embarrassing. It was not pretending that time had stopped; it was showing that a mechanism had limits. A neighbour remembered waiting beneath it for friends before anyone carried a phone. Another used it to explain to her child why clocks have hands. The stopped object had become the subject of more conversation than the working one had attracted in years.

I was nevertheless pleased when it restarted. Affection for the interruption was no reason to prolong it. The clock still has a public use, even if that use is no longer mainly telling me when to catch a bus. It gives the square a common point of attention. I would rather maintain it honestly, accepting occasional repairs, than demand that it behave like a flawless screen or dismiss it because my pocket can perform one of its tasks.

Source B: an original letter in a nineteenth-century voice. This is a period-voice simulation, not an archival document.

Dear William, the new clock has been mounted above the market hall, and its striking can be heard from our workshop when the wind is favourable. Until now, we have depended on several smaller clocks whose accounts of the hour did not always agree. A customer might arrive certain that we had promised work by noon while our own dial maintained that noon was still approaching. Such disputes offered more opportunity for temper than for profitable labour.

The public clock will not abolish every disagreement, but it gives us a reference beyond the instrument most convenient to our argument. I watched several men set their watches beneath it this morning. The act seemed modest, yet there is something reassuring in a town acknowledging that appointments cannot be conducted according to a separate time in every pocket. A delivery arranged for three should not arrive at four by the receiver's reckoning and precisely on time by the carrier's.

There are those who object to the cost and predict that the mechanism will require attention. Of course it will. We do not refuse to mend a roof because rain is likely to return. I hope the committee has provided for its care and not merely for a ceremony at its unveiling. The clock's value will be measured in ordinary mornings when work begins as agreed, not in the number of speeches delivered below its face. Let us admire the workmanship, but let us also remember what the hands are for.

Use the whole of both sources. Compare the writers’ perspectives on public clocks and how their methods convey those perspectives. Support your comparison with evidence from both sources.