One handed alarm clock

for what farm worker in the late 1700's would have needed to know the time more accurately than to the 1/4 hour so he could be out in the fields or milking the cows betimes. It can be temperamental and the weights need fiddling with, perhaps it is the moon's influence! I found it in a box when moving my mother after 50 years. Even she didn't know where it came from and others who might have known are long gone.