The clock was also the horologe of our old poets, from the Latin
_horologium:_
He’ll watch the horologe a double set,
If drink rock not his cradle.—_Othello_, act ii. sc. 3.
Drayton calls the cock the country horologe.
Rabelais thus capriciously ridicules the use of the clock: “The greatest
loss of time that I know, is to count the hours. What good comes of it?
Nor can there be any greater dotage in the world, than for one to guide
and direct his course by the sound of a bell, and not by his own
judgment and discretion.” In similar exuberance has this gay satirist
said: “There is only one quarter of an hour in human life passed ill,
and that is between the calling for the reckoning and paying it.”
With more serious purpose has Sir Walter Scott, in his “Lay of the
Imprisoned Huntsman,” thus anathematised the clock and the dial:
I hate to learn the ebb of time
From yon dull steeple’s drowsy chime,
Or mark it as the sunbeams crawl
Inch after inch along the wall.
Richard II., in the dungeon of Pomfret Castle, soliloquises more
solemnly:
Now hath Time made me his numb’ring clock:
My thoughts are minutes, and with sighs they jade
Their watches on to mine eyes, the outward watch
Whereto my finger, like a dial’s point,
Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.
Now, sir, the sound that tells what hour it is,
Are clamorous groans, that strike upon my heart,
Which is the bell: so sighs, and tears, and groans
Show minutes, times, and hours.
Lucian, who died A.D. 180, refers to an instrument, mechanically
constructed with water, which reported the hours by a bell. “Before the
time of Jerome” (born A.D. 332), says Browne, “there were horologies
that measured the hours, not only by drops of water in glasses, called
_clepsydra_, but also by sand in glasses, called _clepsummia_.” It was
the clepsydra to which Lucian alludes. When the water, which was
constantly dripping out of the vessel, reached a certain level, it drew
away, by means of a rope connected with the piston in the water-vessel,
the ledge on which a weight rested; and the falling of this weight,
which was attached to a bell, caused it to strike. This, perhaps, was
the earliest kind of striking clock.
A public striking clock may well be termed the regulator of society: it
reminds us of our engagements, and announces the hours for exertion or
repose; and in the silence of night it tells us of the hours that are
past, and how many remain before day.
The earliest public clock set up in England was that with three bells,
which was placed in the clochard or bell-tower of the Palace at
Westminster, built by Edward III. in 1365-6: the palace was then the
most frequent residence of the king and his family; and the three bells
were “usually rung at Coronations, Triumphs, Funeralls of Princes, and
their Obits.”[13] This bell-tower stood very near to the site of the
great clock-tower of the new palace; the gilding of the exterior of
which cost no less than 1500_l._
A public clock is a public monitor; and the dimensions of its dial, and
works, and striking-bell add much to the solemnity of its proclaiming
the march of time. The great clocks in the International Exhibition of
1862 were among its colossal marvels.
The clocks of St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Palace, and the Royal
Exchange, are three of the largest clocks in London. The St. Paul’s
hour-hands are the height of a tall man; the hour struck by this clock
has been heard at midnight on the terrace of Windsor Castle; and from
the telegraph station on Putney-heath the hour has been read by the St.
Paul’s clock-face without the aid of a telescope: the hour-numerals are
2 feet 2½ inches in height. This clock once struck thirteen, which being
heard by a sentinel, accused of being asleep at his post at that hour,
was the means of saving his life; this striking thirteen was caused by
the lifting-piece holding on too long.
The former church of St. Paul, Covent Garden, built by Inigo Jones,
contained within the pediment a pendulum-clock, made by Richard Harris
in 1641, and stated by an inscription in the vestry to be the first
pendulum-clock made.[14]
The Horse Guards Clock is properly described by Mr. Denison as “a
superstitiously venerated and bad clock;” it is minutely described by
Mr. B. L. Vulliamy in the _Curiosities of London_, pp. 378-380.
St. James’s Palace Clock, made by Clay, clockmaker to George II.,
strikes the hours and quarters upon three bells; it requires to be wound
up every day, and originally had but one hand. We were told by the late
Mr. B. L. Vulliamy, that when the gatehouse was repaired in 1831, the
clock was removed, and not put up again, on account of the roof being
reported unsafe to carry the weight. The inhabitants of the
neighbourhood then memorialised William IV. for the replacement of the
timekeeper: the King, having ascertained its weight, shrewdly inquired
how, if the tower-roof was not strong enough to carry the clock, it was
safe for the number of persons occasionally seen upon it to witness
processions, &c. The clock was forthwith replaced, and a minute-hand was
added, with new dials: the original dials were of wainscot, in a great
number of very small pieces curiously dovetailed together.
Trinity College, Cambridge, has a double-striking clock, put up by the
famous Dr. Bentley; striking, as it used to be said, once for Trinity
and once for his former college, St. John’s, which had no clock.
The clock of St. Clement’s Danes, in the Strand, strikes twice; the hour
being first struck on a larger bell, and then repeated on a smaller one;
so that if the first has been miscounted, the second may be more
correctly observed.
Wren has introduced the gilt projecting dial in several of the City
churches: that at St. Magnus, London Bridge, was the gift of Sir Charles
Duncomb, who, it is related, when a poor boy, had once to wait upon
London Bridge a considerable time for his master, whom he missed through
not knowing the hour; he then vowed that if ever he became successful in
the world, he would give to St. Magnus a public clock, that passengers
might see the time; and this dial proves the fulfilment of his vow. It
was originally ornamented with several richly gilded figures: upon a
small metal shield inside the clock are engraven the donor’s arms, with
this inscription: “The gift of Sir Charles Duncomb, Knight, Lord Major,
and Alderman of this ward; Langley Bradley fecit, 1709.”
The former church of St. Dunstan-in-the-West, Fleet-street, within
memory possessed one of London’s wonders: it had a large gilt dial
overhanging the street, and above it two figures of savages, life-size,
carved in wood, and standing beneath a pediment, each having in his
right hand a club, with which he struck the quarters upon a suspended
bell, moving his head at the same time. To see the men strike was
considered very attractive; and opposite St. Dunstan’s was a famous
field for pickpockets, who took advantage of the gaping crowd. So it had
long been; for Ned Ward, in his _London Spy_, says: “We added to the
number of fools, and stood a little, making our ears do penance to
please our eyes, with the conceited notion of their (the puppets’) heads
and hands, which moved to and fro with as much deliberate stiffness as
the two wooden horologists at St. Dunstan’s when they strike the
quarters.” Cowper thus describes them in his _Table-Talk:_
When labour and when dulness, club in hand,
Like the two figures at St. Dunstan’s, stand,
Beating alternately, in measur’d time,
The clockwork tintinnabulum of rhyme,
Exact and regular the sounds will be,
But such mere quarter-strokes are not for me.
These figures and the clock were put up in 1671. Among those who were
struck by their oddity was the third Marquis of Hertford, born in 1777:
“When a child, and a good child, his nurse, to reward him, would take
him to see _the giants_ at St. Dunstan’s; and he used to say that when
he grew to be a man _he would buy those giants_” (Cunningham’s _Handbook
of London_). Many a child of rich parents may have used the same words;
but in the present case the Marquis kept his word. When the old church
of St. Dunstan was taken down, in 1830, Lord Hertford attended the
second auction-sale of the materials, and purchased the clock, bells,
and figures for 200_l.;_ he had them placed at the entrance to the
grounds of his villa in the Regent’s Park, thence called St. Dunstan’s
Villa; and here the figures do duty to the present day.
These automata remind us of the Minute-Jacks in Shakspeare’s _Timon of
Athens_, generally interpreted as Jacks of the Clock-house:
You fools of fortune, trencher friends, time’s flies,
Cap and knee slaves, vapours, and minute-jacks.
Still, the Minute-Jacks only struck hours and quarters; and the term is
rather thought to mean “fellows that watch their minutes to make their
advantage, time-servers.” There is no doubt that by the “Jack that keeps
the stroke,” in _Richard III._, is meant the Jack of the
Clock-house.[15]
A much more noteworthy sight than the Fleet-street clock-figures is
possessed by the Londoners of the present day in the Time-ball Signal
upon the roof of the Electric Telegraph Office, No. 448 West Strand.
The signal consists of a zinc ball, 6 feet in diameter, supported by
a rod, which passes down the centre of a column, and carries at the
base a piston, which, in its descent, plunges into a cast-iron
air-cylinder; the escape of the air being regulated so as at
pleasure to check the momentum of the ball, and prevent concussion.
The raising of the ball, half-mast high, takes place daily at 10
minutes to 1 o’clock; at 5 minutes to 1 it is raised to the full
height; and at 1 precisely, and simultaneously with the fall of the
Time-ball at Greenwich Observatory (by which navigators correct
their chronometers), it is liberated by the galvanic current sent
from the Observatory, through a wire laid for that purpose. The same
galvanic current which liberates the Ball in the Strand moves a
needle upon the transit-clock of the Observatory, the time occupied
by the transition being about 1-3000th part of a second; and by the
unloosing of the machinery which supports the ball, less than
one-fifth part of a second. The true moment of one o’clock is
therefore indicated by the first appearance of the line of light
between the dark cross over the ball and the body of the ball
itself. There is a similar Time-ball upon the roof of a clockmaker’s
in Cornhill.
At Edinburgh, also, is a Time-ball connected with a Time-gun signal,
consisting of a large iron cannon, in the Half-moon Battery, at the
Castle; which cannon, having been duly loaded and primed some time
between twelve and one o’clock, is fired off precisely at the latter
hour by an electric influence from the corrected Mean-time of the Royal
Observatory, at a distance of three-quarters of a mile; which, however,
first passes to another clock close to the gun, and thus affords a short
fraction of a second _before_ one o’clock for the train of processes; so
that the actual final flash of the exploding gun in the Castle occurs
absolutely coincidently with the tick of the sixtieth second of the
corrected mean-time clock in the Royal Observatory. The whole is well
described by Professor Piazzi Smith, Astronomer-Royal for Scotland, in
_Good Words_, 1862, part iv.
We now return to the details of the great London Clocks. Mr. Dent
undertook the construction of the Royal Exchange Clock in 1843: it was
required to be superior to any public clock in England, and to satisfy
certain conditions proposed for the first time by the Astronomer-Royal,
and such as could not be satisfied by any clock of the common
construction. Mr. Dent had then no factory of his own for making large
clocks, and he could not get the clock made for him; “but with the
energy and genius by which that remarkable man raised himself from a
tallow-chandler’s apprentice to the position of the first horologist in
the world, he set up a factory for himself at a great expense, and made
the clock there; and of this, the first turret-clock he had ever made,
the Astronomer-Royal certified, in 1845, that it not only satisfied his
conditions, but that Mr. Dent had made some judicious improvements upon
his suggestions, and that he had no doubt it was the best public clock
in the world.”[16] It is true to a second of time, and has a
compensation-pendulum.
The Westminster Palace Clock, designed by Mr. Denison, has four dials,
each 22½ feet wide: they are not the largest in the world, being
considerably less than the dial at Mechlin; but there is no other clock
in the world which has to work four dials of such great width,
especially a clock going 8½ days. St. Paul’s Clock has only two 17-feet
dials, and is wound up every day, which makes a vast difference in the
power and strength required. Each pair of hands weighs above 2 cwt.:
they are made of gun-metal, instead of sheet-iron or copper. The
hour-sockets are iron tubes, 5 inches in diameter; the dials are of
cast-iron framework, filled with opal glass, and stand out 5 feet from
the main walls.
The size of public dials is often very inadequate to their height, and
the distance at which they are intended to be seen. They ought to be at
least one foot in diameter for every ten feet of height above the
ground, and in many cases more, whenever the dial will be seen far off.
Now, the clock-dials of St. Pancras, Euston-square, are but 6½ feet in
diameter, though at the height of 100 feet, and therefore are much too
small.
The Clock, of silver-gilt, presented by Henry VIII. to Anne Boleyn on
the morning of their marriage, is one of the earliest chamber-clocks in
the kingdom: the case is richly chased and engraved, and on the weights
are the initial letters of Henry and Anne, with true-lovers’ knots. This
clock was purchased at the Strawberry Hill sale in the year 1842, for
110_l._, and is now in the collection of Queen Victoria.
We may here mention that the late Duke of Sussex possessed, at
Kensington Palace, an invaluable collection of the early as well as the
most perfect specimens of Time-keepers, among which was “Harrison’s
first Clock, the forerunner of that invaluable machine, without which
the compass itself would be but an imperfect guide to the mariner.”[17]
John Harrison received for his improved chronometers, in 1749, the
Copley Medal; and, thus encouraged by the Royal Society, and by the
hope of sharing the reward of 20,000_l._ offered by Parliament for
the discovery of the longitude, Harrison produced in 1758 a
time-keeper, which was sent for trial on a voyage to Jamaica. After
161 days, the error of the instrument was only one minute five
seconds, and the maker received from the nation 5000_l._ For other
chronometers, subjected, with perfect success, to a trial in a
voyage to Barbadoes, Harrison received 10,000_l._ more. Dr. Stukeley
writes of this ingenious man: “I passed by Mr. Harrison’s house at
Barrow, that excellent genius of clock-making, who bids fair for the
golden prize for the discovery of the longitude. I saw his famous
clock last winter at Mr. George Graham’s: the sweetness of its
motion, the contrivances to take off friction, to defeat the
lengthening and shortening of the pendulum through heat and cold,
and to prevent the disturbance of motion by that of the ship, cannot
be sufficiently admired.”—_Ms. Journal._[18]
An exact measure of time is of the utmost importance to many of the
sciences. Horology is indispensable to astronomy, in which the variation
even of two or three seconds is of the greatest consequence. By means of
a clock the Danish astronomer, Roemer, was enabled to discover that the
eclipses of Jupiter’s satellites took place a few seconds later than he
had calculated, when the earth was in that part of its orbit the
farthest from Jupiter. Speculating on the cause of this phenomenon, he
calculated that light was not propagated instantaneously, but took time
to reach us; and, from calculations founded on this theory, light has
been discovered to dart through space with a velocity of about 192,000
miles in a second: thus, the light of the sun takes eight minutes to
reach the earth.
Horology has also enabled us to discover that when the wind passes one
mile per hour, it is scarcely perceptible; while at the rate of one
hundred miles per hour it acquires sufficient force to tear up trees,
and destroy the produce of the earth. And, without the aid of a
seconds-clock, it would have been scarcely possible to ascertain that a
cannon-ball flies at the rate of 600 feet in a second.
The use of Chronometers in geography and navigation is well known; since
it is only necessary to ascertain the exact difference in time between
two places, to determine their distance east or west of each other.
Graham applied the motion of a Clock showing sidereal time to make a
telescope point in the direction of any particular star, even when
before the horizon.
Alexander Cummins made a Clock for George III. which registered the
height of the barometer during every day throughout the year. This was
effected by a circular card, of about 2 feet in diameter, being made to
turn round once in a year. The card was divided by radii lines into 365
divisions, the months and days of the month being marked round the edge,
while the usual range of the barometer was indicated in inches and
tenths by circular lines described from the centre. A pencil with a fine
point pressed on the card by a spring, and, held by an upright rod
floating on the mercury, faithfully marked the state of the barometer;
the card, being carried forward by the clock, brought each day to the
pencil. Wren proposed to have a clock constructed on a similar
principle, to register the position and force of the wind; which idea
has been adopted.
In the Armoury of George IV. was a model of a small cannon, with a clock
attached to the lock in such a manner that the trigger could be
discharged at any desired time by setting the clock as an alarum.
Breguet contrived a Clock to set a Watch to time. This clock is of the
size of a chamber-clock, and has a fork and support on a top to carry
the watch. When the clock strikes twelve, a piece of steel like a needle
rises, and entering a hole in the rim of the watch-case, comes in
contact with a piece which carries the minute-hand, and by pressure
makes the hand of the watch correspond with that of the clock, provided
the difference be not more than twenty minutes.
The same artist constructed for George IV. a Chronometer which had two
pendulums, one making the machine show mean time, the other to make it
act as a metronome by beating the time for music. This pendulum was
merely a small ball attached to a slight chain carried round a pulley,
on the centre of which was an index, which, when brought to any of the
musical measures engraved on the scale, shortened or lengthened the
chain, so as to cause the pendulum to perform its oscillations in the
time required, and a hammer struck on a bell the beats contained in each
bar; these would be silently struck by placing a piece of wood between
the hammer and the bell; the musical time was also indicated by the
seconds-hand of the clock.
A certain dynamical theory of chemistry has been propounded, founded
upon precipitations and decompositions taking place in a definite space.
Time forms, too, the very key by which alone we can be admitted to a
proper view of the archives of the ancient world. Want of time for the
due development of the geological periods, for a long season, hindered
men’s conceptions upon this subject from taking a sharp, clear cast of
thought. Linnæus constructed a _Clock of Flora_—a dial of flowers, each
opening and shutting at an appointed time.[19]
By a series of comparisons with Pendulums placed at the surface and the
interior of the earth, the Astronomer-Royal has ascertained the
variation of gravity in descending to the bottom of a deep mine, as the
Harton coal-pit, near South Shields. By calculations from these
experiments, he has found the mean density of the earth to be 6·566, the
specific gravity of water being represented by unity. In other words, it
has been ascertained by these experiments that if the earth’s mass
possessed every where its average density, it would weigh, bulk for
bulk, 6·566 times as much as water. The immediate result of the
computations of the Astronomer-Royal is: supposing a clock adjusted to
go true time at the top of the mine, it would gain 2¼ seconds per day at
the bottom. Or it may be stated thus: that gravity is greater at the
bottom of a mine than at the top by 1/19190th part.[20]
The Electric Clock is an invention of our own time. An ordinary clock
consists essentially of a series of wheels acting on each other, and
carrying round, as they revolve, the hands which mark the seconds,
minutes, and hours. The wheels are moved by the falling of a weight, or
the unwinding of a spring; and the rate at which they revolve is
determined by the length of a pendulum made to oscillate by the wheels.
In electric or (as they should rather be called) electro-magnetic
clocks, there are neither weights nor springs; so that they never run
down, and never require to be wound up. To produce motion, electricity
is employed alternately to make and remake an electro-magnet, or
alternately to reverse the poles of a permanent magnet, which, by
lifting up and letting fall, or attracting and repelling a lever, moves
the wheels.
M. Bouilly endeavoured to show that character was much influenced by
Time-keepers. He describes two young persons who were allowed to select
Watches for themselves: one chose a plain watch, being told that its
performance could be depended on; the other, attracted by the elegance
of a case, decided upon one of inferior construction. The possessor of
the good Watch became remarkable for punctuality; while the other,
although always in a hurry, was never in time, and discovered that, next
to being too late, there is nothing worse than being too early.
The choice of a good Watch is, however, a difficult matter: none but a
good workman is capable of forming a correct opinion; and a Watch must
be bad indeed for an inexperienced eye to detect the errors either of
the principle or its construction; even a trial of a year or two is no
proof, for wear seldom takes place within that time; and while a good
Watch can but go well, a bad one, by chance, may occasionally do so.
A Watch must not only be well constructed, and on a good principle, but
the brass must be hard, and the steel properly tempered. The several
parts must be in exact proportion, and well finished, so as to continue
in motion with the least possible wear. It must also be so made that,
when taken to pieces, all its parts may be replaced as firmly as before.
A bad Watch is one in which no more attention has been paid to the
proportion of the parts, or durability of the material, than was
necessary to make it perform for a time: it is either the production of
inefficient workmen, or of those who, being limited in price, are unable
to give sufficient time to perfect the work. In some instances these
Watches will go well for a time; but as they wear, from friction, they
require frequent repair, which cannot be effectually done.
The most useful lesson is, that low price is not exactly another word
for cheapness. If you wish to possess a good Watch, apply to a maker of
known honesty and ability in the art he professes, and who, therefore,
should be implicitly trusted.
It has been said, that “no man ever made a true circle, or a straight
line, except by chance;” and the same may be said of any machine which
measured time exactly; indeed, positive accuracy can never be attained
until an unchangeable material is discovered, of which the works may be
constructed. These practical instructions are by Mr. Adam Thomson.
How beautifully has Lord Herbert of Cherbury sung “to his Watch when he
could not sleep:”
Uncessant minutes, whilst you move you tell
The time that tells our life, which though it run
Never so fast or far, your new begun
Short steps shall overtake: for though life well
May ’scape his own account, it shall not yours.
You are Death’s auditors, that both divide
And sum whate’er that life inspir’d endures,
Past a beginning; and through you we bide
The doom of fate, whose unrecall’d decree
You date, bring, execute; making what’s new,
Ill, and good, old; for as we die in you,
You die in time, time in eternity.
---------------------
Footnote 13:
_Archæologia_, vol. xxxvii.
Footnote 14:
Cunningham’s _Handbook_, 2d edit. p. 386. If this inscription be
correct, it negatives the claim of Huyghens to having first applied
the pendulum to the clock, about 1657; although Justus Bergen,
mechanician to the Emperor Rodolphus, who reigned from 1576 to 1612,
is said to have attached one to a clock used by Tycho Brahe. Inigo
Jones, the architect of St. Paul’s, having been in Italy during the
time of Galileo, it is probable that he communicated what he heard of
the pendulum to Harris. Huyghens, however, violently contested for the
priority; while others claimed it for the younger Galileo, who, they
asserted, had, at his father’s suggestion, applied the pendulum to a
clock in Venice which was finished in 1649.—Adam Thomson’s _Time and
Timekeepers_, pp. 67, 68.
Footnote 15:
Nares’s _Glossary_.
Footnote 16:
_Denison on Clocks._
Footnote 17:
_Adam Thomson._
Footnote 18:
There is an odd traditionary story told of a Watch at Somerset House.
A little above the entrance-door to the Stamps and Taxes is a white
watch-face,—of which it is told, that when the wall was being built, a
workman had the misfortune to fall from the scaffolding, and was only
saved from destruction by the ribbon of his watch, which caught in a
piece of projecting work. In thankful remembrance of his wonderful
preservation, he is said to have inserted his watch into the face of
the wall. Such is the popular belief, and hundreds of persons go to
Somerset House to see this fancied memento, and hear the above tale.
But the watch-face was placed in its present position many years ago
by the Royal Society, as a meridian mark for a portable transit
instrument in one of the windows of the anteroom. Captain Smyth
assisted in mounting the instrument, and perfectly recollects the
watch-face placed against the opposite wall.
Footnote 19:
_The Relations of Science_, by J. M. Ashley.
Footnote 20:
_Letter to James Mather, Esq., South Shields._ See also _Professor
Airy’s Lecture_, 1854. Baily approximately weighed the earth by
another contrivance, described and illustrated in _Things not
generally Known_, First Series, which see.
----------------------------