As part of a project of studying and inventorying all tower clocks, I had the opportunity to examine the clock of Notre-Dame in Paris in 2016. Following the 2019 fire, I observed on April 16, 2019 that the clock might be reconstructed, based on my data, which is, as far as I know, the only available technical survey of the clock. Shortly after my suggestion, and probably stirred by it, a Paris watch repairer started a project to reconstruct the clock, but he did not have the data I had. The group around this watch repairer even had the project to make a 3D model of the lost clock, again without the necessary technical data. I did not have any plans to make a 3D model of the clock, but eventually I gave it a try between February and May 2020, in part helped by the pandemic lockdown in France.
As early as May 2020, I also had made some tests for viewing the model on cellphones. But it was only during the next Winter that I completed the project of creating a mobile application.
This application seems to be a world's first, as there have apparently been no similar applications before, available to almost everyone, and showing the details of such a complex mechanism. 3D models of clocks have been built, but they have not been made available on mobile platforms. They have also not been made available in exchange formats such as STEP files. I therefore hope that others will follow and will view the Notre Dame clock project as a new benchmark.
We have the world's first 3D mobile application for a tower clock, and a new benchmark for heritage preservation.