The Pulse of Time
The earliest recorded weight-driven mechanical clock was installed in 1283 at Dunstable Priory in Bedfordshire, England. That the Roman Catholic Church should have played a major role in the invention and development of clock technology is not surprising: the strict observance of prayer times by monastic orders occasioned the need for a more reliable instrument of time measurement. Further, the Church not only controlled education but also possessed the wherewithal to employ the most skillful craftsmen. Additionally, the growth of urban mercantile populations in Europe during the second half of the 13th century created demand for improved timekeeping devices. By 1300 artisans were building clocks for churches and cathedrals in France and Italy. Because the initial examples indicated the time by striking a bell (thereby alerting the surrounding community to its daily duties), the name for this new machine was adopted from the Latin word for “bell,” clocca.
The revolutionary aspect of this new timekeeper was neither the descending weight that provided its motive force nor the gear wheels (which had been around for at least 1,300 years) that transferred the power; it was the part called the escapement. This device controlled the wheels’ rotation and transmitted the power required to maintain the motion of the oscillator, the part that regulated the speed at which the timekeeper operated. The inventor of the clock escapement is unknown.
Uniform Hours
Although the mechanical clock could be adjusted to maintain temporal hours, it was naturally suited to keeping equal ones. With uniform hours, however, arose the question of when to begin counting them, and so, in the early 14th century, a number of systems evolved. The schemes that divided the day into 24 equal parts varied according to the start of the count: Italian hours began at sunset, Babylonian hours at sunrise, astronomical hours at midday and “great clock” hours (used for some large public clocks in Germany) at midnight. Eventually these and competing systems were superseded by “small clock,” or French, hours, which split the day, as we currently do, into two 12-hour periods commencing at midnight.
During the 1580s clockmakers received commissions for timekeepers showing minutes and seconds, but their mechanisms were insufficiently accurate for these fractions to be included on dials until the 1660s, when the pendulum clock was developed. Minutes and seconds derive from the sexagesimal partitions of the degree introduced by Babylonian astronomers. The word “minute” has its origins in the Latin prima minuta, the first small division; “second” comes from secunda minuta, the second small division. The sectioning of the day into 24 hours and of hours and minutes into 60 parts became so well established in Western culture that all efforts to change this arrangement failed. The most notable attempt took place in revolutionary France in the 1790s, when the government adopted the decimal system. Although the French successfully introduced the meter, liter and other base-10 measures, the bid to break the day into 10 hours, each consisting of 100 minutes split into 100 seconds, lasted only 16 months.
Portable Clocks
For centuries after the invention of the mechanical clock, the periodic tolling of the bell in the town church or clock tower was enough to demarcate the day for most people. But by the 15th century a growing number of clocks were being made for domestic use. Those who could afford the luxury of owning a clock found it convenient to have one that could be moved from place to place. Innovators accomplished portability by replacing the weight with a coiled spring. The tension of a spring, however, is greater after it is wound. The contrivance that overcame this problem, known as a fusee (from fusus, the Latin term for “spindle”), was invented by an unknown mechanical genius probably between 1400 and 1450. This cone-shaped device was connected by a cord to the barrel housing the spring: when the clock was wound, drawing the cord from the barrel onto the fusee, the diminishing diameter of the spiral of the fusee compensated for the increasing pull of the spring. Thus, the fusee equalized the force of the spring on the wheels of the timekeeper.
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Add CommentReading this article was a wonderfully informative, and illuminating use of my time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFrom the origins of timekeeping nomenclature, to measuring the magnetic field created by a heartbeat, this is the most comprehensive, yet brief, study of how the measurement of time relates to history. Very nicely written, thank you.
To Happy Phil : My compliments, I could not have written it better.To Happy Phil : My compliments, I could not have written it better. Dr.Kamlander.@aon.at
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNice slice of history...very much enjoyed...Thanks!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVery interesting, informative post. An in depth article by the author would be greatly appreciated by such as me, if not the general citizen who is more entranced with brevity.
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