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Notice above Nov. 21, 1932 order of new pendulum and spring to replace the broken one described in the article below.  The pendulum did NOT weigh 500 lbs. 

THE PENDULUM AND SPRING

This screen shot from a Trevor Murphy video featured below shows him pointing to the spring that suspends the pendulum.  It appears to be two metal plates that are thin enough to flex from side to side as the pendulum swings.

According to this article,  the "monster clock"  arrived in SIXTEEN large cases.  This is A LOT of luggage, for a clock, however, figure it has four faces and each face is made up of 6 "pie wedges"  glass backing with its corresponding portion of the dial.  (The bell has increased 500 lbs. since the previous description and the dials increased another half-foot from the previous one.)

Trevor Murphy has some excellent YouTube videos which are very well shot and narrated.

HOOD COUNTY COURTHOUSE TOWER CLOCK, TEXAS

The Seth Thomas #16 Tower Clock seen at right was a restoration job done for the Hood Co. Texas courthouse.  It appears to be identical to Hortense except that the gear assembly at the top that connects to the clock face drive shafts aren't attached here. 

The object sticking up in the back can also be seen in the Seth Thomas diagram above.  It is one of two fan blades held by a wooden rod here.  The actual fan blade is seen on edge.  Extending downward would be another identical rod and blade and together the whole assembly rotates like a propeller.  The plates produce a wind resistance just like a fan.  This controls the speed at which the hammer strikes the bell.  In other words, it acts as a "governor" for the strike mechanism due to its air resistance.  Without this, the weights would freefall and spin the drum faster and faster, while the hammer would beat away at the bell like a jackhammer.  Until the weights bottomed out, snapping the strike cord, and continuing to plummet through a floor or two of City Hall.  (Not to mention  probably sending the drive chain flying through a wall.)

One of the videos below show this mechanism in action.

Seth Thomas Clocks info below is courtesy of
 Seth Thomas Tower Clocks (1911) from SurvivorLibrary.com

Hortense is a #16 Seth Thomas Hour Strike tower clock.  She had a Graham escapement and had a 1 second wood pendulum.

She had four sectional glass and iron dials 6 ft 6 in. in diameter.

According to a few newspaper articles published during construction of City Hall, and installation of the clock, the floor of the room where the clock mechanism is housed is 133.5 feet above ground.

Using Seth Thomas' guide for dial size, Hortense's dials should have been just over 13 feet in diameter for optimum visibility.

This is the configuration which was set up for Hortense.

HORTENSE'S PENDULUM

Two different pendulums were available for the #16 tower clock.  A four-foot long one weighing 135 lbs. or an eight-foot long one weighing 175 lbs.  The 8 ft. one would have required a hole cut in the floor for the pendulum to swing freely in the bell room below.  Being twice as long, its period would have been 2 seconds--1 second in each direction.  Hortense had a 1-second pendulum, so it was the 4 ft. one weighing 135 lbs.  With the clock itself being 54 inches tall, a 48-inch long pendulum wouldn't reach the floor if connected to the clock six inches or less from the top.

HOW MUCH DID HORTENSE WEIGH?

Assuming the weight given for the Seth Thomas tower clocks  diagram seen at left, they are describing the mechanism seen in the diagram.  They couldn't give the weight with all the attachments because that would be different for each order.  So it makes sense that the weight given here is for just what you see here.

The 4 ft. long pendulum with 135 lb. weight seems to be included in this "box" because it is shown along with the clock mechanism.  However, an 8 ft. pendulum might have to be shipped separately, unless it came apart in two 4-ft sections.

The line about the dials is only there to specify what a #16 tower clock can drive.  It was "FOR ONE dial up to 10 feet [in diam.] OR FOUR dials of 8.5 feet or less.  Obviously, glass dials wouldn't be shipped in the same box as a device such as seen at left.  They would require more protective framing. 

Same goes for the bell, it's giving a suggested size, not stating that the bell is in the same box with the clock. 

So Hortense weighed about 1,500 lbs. including the crate.  This would appear to have included the 135 lb pendulum but not her bell nor her 35 lb hammer, and definitely NOT the four sectional glass faces with iron dial rings (six pieces per face).  

There is no mention of the weights which drive the clock and the ones which power the strike hammer, so those must have been shipped separately as they alone totaled 1,700 lbs.  Then there is the weight of the bell (which McShane Bell Co. will provide below), which also couldn't possibly be part of the approx. 1,500 lb boxed weight they describe.

THE GRAHAM ESCAPEMENT

George Graham (1673-1751) of London was an English clockmaker and inventor and a member of the Royal Society. He was partner to the influential English clockmaker Thomas Tompion during the last few years of Tompion's life. Graham is credited with inventing several design improvements to the pendulum clock, inventing the mercury compensation pendulum and also the cylinder escapement for watches and the first chronograph. However, his greatest innovation was the invention of the Graham or dead beat escapement around 1715. Graham refused to patent these inventions because he felt that they should be used by other watchmakers.

George Graham is said to have modified the anchor escapement to eliminate recoil, creating the deadbeat escapement, also called the Graham escapement. This has been the escapement of choice in almost all finer pendulum clocks since then. Graham modified the arm of each steel pallet so that the lower portion of each limb was based on the arc of a circle with its center at the axis of rotation of the pallets (see Fig. 1). The tip of each limb had a surface, the angle of which, based on force directions, was designed to provide an impulse to the pallet as the escape tooth slid across the surface of each tip. The escape tooth strikes the pallet above the tip on the lower portion of the limb (see Fig. 2), where the escape wheel is rotating clockwise and is about to strike the entrance pallet on the left side, above the impulse face. The surface that the escape tooth strikes is the locking face, since it prevents the escape wheel from rotating farther.
Info and images below from Princeton.edu
 

Animated GIF courtesy of Wooster Physicists
"Deadbeat Escapement"

Photo is courtesy of the South West Museum of Clocks & Watches who beautifully restored this Seth Thomas tower clock in its original colors.

THIS IS AN OLDER SETH THOMAS BUT VERY SIMILAR IN DESIGN TO HORTENSE.
Just before it chimes at 11:00, you can see the mechanism that controls the chime count at the very edge of the rotating wheel., called a "snail."   The count mechanism method is called "rack & snail."

This is the critical part that releases the striking train at the proper time and counts out the proper number of strikes. It is the only part of the striking mechanism that is attached to the clock's timekeeping works. Virtually all modern clocks use the rack and snail. The snail (N) is usually mounted on the clock's center wheel shaft, which turns once every 12 hours. There is also a release lever (L) which on the hour releases the rack and allows the timing train to turn.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Striking_clock

This video below shows the striking sequence in action at 2 min 25 sec.   At the rear of the clock can be seen the fan blades start spinning using the air resistance to govern the rate at which the hammer strikes the bell. 

This clock is equipped with electric motors to rewind the weights automatically.

This is a different type of escapement but it gives a good view of how the bell-strike mechanism works the hammer.

After 162 years in business, the longevity of McShane Bell Foundry takes on added resonance.  Photo: Co-owner William R. Parker III, left, with head service tech Joe Bennett.
Christopher Myers Photo courtesy of 2018 article in Baltimore Magazine

Henry McShane was a teenage lad from County Louth, Ireland, when he immigrated to Baltimore in 1847. He found employment in a brass factory and took a shine to the work. Nine years later, in 1856, he struck out on his own, opening the original McShane Bell Foundry at Holliday and Centre Streets.

Initially, the company made pipes and plumbing fixtures, in addition to bells. But soon its bells—with their graceful contours and clear ringing tones—overshadowed the company’s other output. In particular, the company became known for its peals (sets of seven or fewer bells) and its chimes (sets of eight or more bells).

By 1873, business was booming, so much so that McShane opened a second facility near where The Baltimore Sun building now sits on Guilford Avenue (then called North Street).

An illustration of the North Street complex from a company catalogue in 1900 gives some idea of the scale of the operation, which employed some 200 workers. The image shows several smoke-spewing chimneys puffing away while horse-drawn carriages, streetcars, and a train whiz by. Inside, the catalogue boasts that, “space will not permit of our giving full detail of all the chimes and peals we have made,” but does go on to list 15 pages worth of recently completed projects, including chimes in Key West, Chicago, Detroit, and Ontario, Canada, and peals in locations ranging from Boston to Buenos Aires and New Orleans to New York City.

Images below are from the above mentioned McShane Bell Foundry catalogue printed 1900 found at Internet Archive.

The McShane Bell Foundry factory complex located at 415-441 North Street (Guilford Avenue), Baltimore, MD. Cropped from page 53 in a 1900 McShane products trade catalogue. Digital image available through the Internet Archive.

Many of McShane's bells are at many Baltimore sites, too. Though not listed in the 1900 catalogue, the company’s most famous local bell is the “Lord Baltimore.” Cast in 1889, the 7,100-pound beauty still sits atop Baltimore’s City Hall and chimes on the hour. Other prominent McShane bells sound out from perches at Towson University, The Maryland State Boy choir, and The Johns Hopkins University’s Homewood campus.

After a fire damaged part of the North Street foundry in 1893, McShane decided to move at least part of the company’s operations to an undeveloped plot along the Patapsco east of Baltimore. When the railroad followed the foundry out that way two years later, officials asked McShane to provide a name for the new depot. McShane’s son William James, then the company’s vice president, chose to honor his father’s Irish hometown, nailing a sign to a tree near the train station that read "Dundalk.”

Because many records were destroyed in the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904, relatively little is known about the company in the early 20th century. The timeline becomes clear again in 1933, when a family by the name of McAleer sold the business to William R. Parker Sr.
 

“My grandfather, back in the 1930s, had a tool and die machine shop next to the bell foundry,” explains Parker III. “He was just fascinated by the bell business. . . . When [the McAleers] took ill, my grandfather stepped in and bought the business. It has been in my family ever since.”

In 1946, after yet another fire, Parker Sr. and his wife, Edith Meyers—who ran the front office—moved the foundry to a two-story structure on East Federal Street, near Penn Station. In 1965, Parker Sr.’s eldest son, William R. Parker Jr., joined the family business. And in 1979, after the company lost its lease on the Federal Street property, Parker Jr. moved the foundry to a warehouse in Glen Burnie “on a temporary basis,” figuring at least he’d be closer to the family home in nearby Pasadena.
 

Though the story of McShane Bell Foundry is marked by near constant change, there has been one through line: an unflagging devotion to—and pride in—the company’s superior craftsmanship. This starts with Henry McShane’s original—and somewhat eccentric—bell-making recipe.
 

The McShane Bell Foundry is now located in St. Louis, Missouri. Over the past 150 years, the firm has produced over 300,000 bells for cathedrals, churches, municipal buildings and schools in communities around the world - including the 7,000-pound bell that hangs in the dome of Baltimore's City Hall. It was featured on an episode of the Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs.. In 2019, the company moved its headquarters from Glen Burnie, near Baltimore, Maryland to St. Louis Missouri, as it centralized its manufacturing and shipping. 

BELOW FROM THE McSHANE WEBSITE:

 

"Our bells are produced using time honored techniques and with state of the art foundry craftsmanship and technologies to produce bronze church bells that are as beautiful to hear as they are to view. All our bells come with state of the art mechanical and electrical ringer’s systems for both swinging and stationary bells. Our state of the art equipment is what helps produce their beautiful unmistakably McShane tones. Our goal is simple: to produce the best sounding bells with the most up to date ringing systems for our customers. We approach each project big or small as if it’s our only project. This accountability and attention to details for our customers is what sets McShane Bell Foundry apart. Our other services include consultation, inspections, annual maintenance contracts, and bell towers. Basically McShane can handle your church bell projects from start to finish with outstanding results."

Some of the above info is parts of a 2018 article courtesy of Baltimore Magazine, Wikipedia and the McShane website