Cuckoo time

The cuckoo has regularly been heard in Princes Street Gardens since 1905. However it must be many years since a real cuckoo has been heard there. In 1950 a new model cuckoo was given its own little house overlooking the different garden designs each year on the oldest floral clock in the world. This year the adjacent design commemorates ten years of Edinburgh as a Fairtrade City.

From 1905 onwards, a mechanism was added to reproduce the sound of a cuckoo, every fifteen minutes. The sound was produced by two organ bellows and organ pipes, but there was no model cuckoo to be seen.
By 1950, the sound of the cuckoo had become almost drowned by the noise of nearby traffic, so a new cuckoo sound system, including loudspeaker, was installed. A model cuckoo was also added, appearing out of its housing every fifteen minutes.
Until 1972, Edinburgh's floral clock operated mechanically. It needed to be wound daily. In 1973 it was converted, by Ritchie, to become electrically driven.

(At last I have managed to find the time to finish adding my back blips from our recent holiday when we visited 7 groups of relatives and 8 groups of friends scattered around England.)