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TIME AND TIME-TELLERS.
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| [Illustration: Frontispiece] |
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TIME AND TIME-TELLERS.
* * * * *
BY
JAMES W. BENSON.
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| [Illustration: Sundial] |
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LONDON:
ROBERT HARDWICKE, 192, PICCADILLY.
1875.
JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS.
INDEX TO THE ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
1 FRONTISPIECE
2 VIGNETTE
3 THE POCKET RING DIAL 14
4 SILVER POCKET DIAL AND COMPASS 16
5 THE CLEPSYDRA OR WATER CLOCK 19
6 THE BOOK-SHAPED WATCH 35
7 ANCIENT TABLE WATCH 36
8 ANCIENT WATCH WITH DIAL 39
9 OLD ENGLISH ROUND WATCH 40
10 OLD OVAL WATCH 41
11 ANCIENT ROUND ORNAMENTAL WATCH 42
12 OLD ENGLISH CALENDAR WATCH 43
13 MARY QUEEN O' SCOTS WATCH (DEATH'S HEAD) 44
14 ANCIENT WATCH CASE (SCRIPTURAL DESIGN) 45
15 DITTO TABLE WATCH (DITTO) 46
16 GRETTON'S WATCH 48
17 ANCIENT BOX WATCH 49
18 OLIVER CROMWELL'S WATCH 50
19 EARLY ORNAMENTAL ROUND WATCH CASE 51
20 JOHN MILTON'S WATCH 52
21 SMALL EARLY WATCH 54
22 ANCIENT WATCH WITH PENDULUM 55
23 ANCIENT BRASS WATCH WITH LID 56
24 IGNATIUS HUGGEFORD'S WATCH 59
MODERN WATCHES.
25 HORIZONTAL 74
26 SKELETON LEVER 74
27 FULL PLATE LEVER 75
28 THREE-QUARTER PLATE LEVER 75
29 THE CHRONOGRAPH 92
30 PERPETUAL CALENDAR, KEYLESS 96
31 COMPLICATED DITTO AND INDEPENDENT SECONDS 97
32 THE MERIDIAN WATCH 99
ESCAPEMENTS TO WATCHES.
33 THE VERGE ESCAPEMENT 78
34 THE HORIZONTAL DO. 79
35 THE DUPLEX DO. 80
36 THE LEVER DO. 81
37 THE CHRONOMETER DO. 83
BALANCES, ETC.
38 COMPENSATION BALANCE 85
39 OLD BALANCE CLOCK 108
40 CLOCK SPRING 109
41 RACK STRIKING WORK 113
42 BACK OF FRENCH CLOCK 116
43 CARRIAGE CLOCK 118
45 ENGLISH ORMOLU CLOCKS 120-22
46 TELL-TALE CLOCK 123
CLOCK ESCAPEMENTS.
47 CROWN WHEEL ESCAPEMENT 147
48 ANCHOR DO. 148
49 DEAD BEAT DO. 149
50 FRENCH SINGLE-PIN ESCAPEMENT 150
51 THREE LEGG'D GRAVITY DO. 151
52 DOUBLE DITTO DITTO 154
TURRET CLOCKS.
53 WELLS CATHEDRAL CLOCK 135
54 OLD ST DUNSTAN'S DO. 137
55 ST JAMES'S PALACE DO. 138
56 ST PAUL'S CATHEDRAL DO. 140
57 ROYAL FREE HOSPITAL DO. 141
58 MEMORIAL TURRET CLOCK DIAL 157
59 MODERN TURRET CLOCK MOVEMENT 164
60 " " HOUR WHEEL AND SNAIL 166
61 " " THE RACK 168
62 " " THE PENDULUM ROD 169
63 QUARTER OR CHIME CLOCK 171
64 GAS WHEEL FOR ILLUMINATED DIAL 172
65 NEST OF BEVELLED WHEELS CARRYING HANDS 173
66 HAMMER AND BELL 174
67 BENSON'S GREAT CLOCK. THE EXTERIOR 175
68 " " " THE MOVEMENT 176
69 SUN-DIAL 180
TIME AND TIME-TELLERS.
Time cannot be thoroughly defined, nor even properly comprehended by
mankind, for our personal acquaintance with it is so brief that our
longest term is compared to a span, and to 'the grass which in the
morning is green and groweth up, and in the evening is cut down and
withered.' The ordinary thinker can scarcely carry his idea of Time
beyond that small portion of it which he has known, under the name of
life-time. The metaphysician classes Time with those other
mysteries,--Space, Matter, Motion, Force, Consciousness, which are the
Gordian knots of Mental Science. Time is naturally divided into three
most unequal parts,--whereof the Past includes all that has happened
until now from that far-distant period when 'Heaven and Earth rose out
of chaos;' the Present is but a moment, expended in a breath, to be
again like that breath momentarily renewed; the Future is, as the
Past,--'a wide unbounded prospect,' an 'undiscovered country,' into
which Prophecy itself penetrates but partially, and even then bears
back to us but small information; for its language catches the
character of a grander clime, and the denizens of this lower earth are
incapable of understanding its gorgeous metaphors; the brightness is
as blinding as the darkness. We may attempt to pierce the Future by
the light which History throws from the Past, but History's record is
imperfect; her chronicles are of the rudest and most unreliable
character; her most valued memorials serve but to make Past 'darkness
visible,' her most ancient registers reach back but a short distance
compared with those testimonies which geologists have discovered, and
given us veritable 'sermons in stones' about. The Past is, indeed,
scarcely less of a mystery than the Future; even the Present we only
know in part, but we do know that the brief term during which man
'flits across the stage' of time ere he goes hence and is no more
seen, is of inestimable value. Most of us soon make the discovery that
the world has much to teach which there is little time to learn and
still less time to apply to good purpose. _Ars longa, vita brevis
est_, is the general expression of human experience. For every man
there are duties and labours for which time is all too short; just as
he begins to understand and to perform his work wisely and
successfully, the 'spirit of the destinies,' as Mr Carlyle would say,
'calls him away;' but whither he goeth is as great a mystery as
whence he cometh. This, however, we do know, no wise man ever
disregarded Time, inasmuch as of this treasure there is no laying in a
fresh store when life's supply has been exhausted; the wasters, the
'killers' of Time, like the foolish virgins who neglected their lamps,
are met invariably with the 'Not so,'--as the door of opportunity is
shut in their faces. Like the dial with the inscription '_Nulla
vestigia retrorsum_' each man's steps are taken never to be retraced,
the act once done can no more be recalled than the shadow on the dial
can go backward. What wonder then that the most thoughtful of men are
particularly careful of their time, regulating their use of it with
the utmost precision and weighing it out as scrupulously as a miser
would his gold? What wonder that they should sigh and grieve over a
wasted day, and with bitter self-reproach should say to themselves as
Titus did, 'Perdidi diem,'--I have lost a day? What wonder is it that
such should teach themselves to wrestle with Time, even as Jacob
wrestled with the angel, for a blessing; and to regard those reckless
ones, in whose butterfly existence are counted only the 'shining
hours,'--as the bee might be supposed to regard the idle gnats which
frolic in the sunbeams heedless both of to-day and of to-morrow.
The poets are our best interpreters of Time, and they seem never tired
of referring to it and symbolising it by every possible figure,
emblem, and trope.[1] Celerity of motion and brevity of duration are
discovered to be its chief characteristics. Time is therefore depicted
as flying,--fast, noiselessly, and uninterruptedly. It is a river,
speeding on with imperceptible but resistless pace to the ocean of
eternity. It is a stern vigorous old man--Time is already old--rushing
by us with never-slackening strides, bearing blessings for each and
all, but we must be upon the alert to strive with him for his
gifts--'to seize Time by the forelock'--or he will forget to bestow
them.
We too often charge upon Time the evil which is the result of our own
lack of energy, and thus it happens that although in kindly moments
our poets seem to delight in exalting and glorifying him for all
manner of enjoyments, at others they can find no word too coarse or
uncivil to apply to him. 'Time,' says Shakespeare, 'is a very
bankrupt,' adding,
'Nay, he's a thief too; have you not heard men say
That time comes stealing on by night and day?'
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| FOOTNOTE: |
| |
| [1] Poebus Apollo in Ovid's Metamorphoses claims that he is Time's |
| special exponent:-- |
| |
| ----'Per me, quod eritque, fuitque, |
| Estque, patet; per me concordant carmina nervis.' |
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Time is, in proverbial philosophy, the most churlish and
unaccommodating of acquaintances,--'Time and tide tarry for no man.'
Time is always liable to be chided, as we have said, when one feels
like Hamlet, 'The times are out of joint;' although our next door
neighbour may, with as much or more reason, be blessing the self-same
hour we are condemning. Time is indeed all things to all men, and
'travels divers paces with divers persons.' Sweet Rosalind described
long ago 'who Time ambles withal, who Time trots withal, and who he
stands still withal.' 'I prithee,' asks Orlando, 'who doth he trot
withal?' and no matter how often we overhear her reply, we shall
listen with delight to the quaint language of the pretty
rejoinder,--'Marry, he trots hard with a young maid between the
contract of her marriage and the day it is solemnized; if the interim
be but a se'nnight, Time's pace is so hard that it seems the length of
seven years.' 'And who ambles Time withal?' 'With a priest that lacks
Latin and a rich man that hath not the gout; for the one sleeps easily
because he cannot study; and the other lives merrily because he feels
no pain; the one lacking the burthen of lean and wasteful learning,
the other knowing no burthen of heavy tedious penury. These ambles
Time withal.' 'Who doth he gallop withal?' 'With a thief to the
gallows; for though he go as softly as foot can fall, he thinks
himself too soon there.' 'Who stays Time still withal?' 'With lawyers
in the vacation; for they sleep between term and term, and then they
perceive not how Time wags.'
If Roger Bacon's Brazen-head could have repeated and continued his
oracular utterances at fixed intervals he would have been a very
sensational performer over some prominent public time-piece of the
present day. If only once in twelve months, say at midnight, when the
year ends, he could have pronounced his three important speeches,
'Time is;--Time was;--Time's past!' he might have rivalled some of our
best actors or orators in attracting the multitude; unfortunately,
however, our mechanical clockwork performers have never risen to the
dignity of speech, and the secret of Friar Bacon's magic died with the
inventor of gunpowder,--which last it is a pity, perhaps, did not also
slip out of use and memory along with it. 'Time is, time was, time's
past' seems to comprise a whole world of hopes, fears, and lost
opportunities, and sounds like a little condensed history of all that
ever has happened or ever can happen. Herein we may imagine we can
observe the wonder-working qualities of Time, solving all mysteries,
bringing everything whether of good or evil to fruition, testing
friendship and love, solacing troubled and wounded hearts, and healing
all manner of griefs; but then we also remark that he is the abaser of
the proud as well as the uplifter of the humble. If he builds, he as
surely destroys, being, indeed, the Great Spoiler, _edax rerum_,
before whose breath myriads of living things through all generations
have faded away, in regular sequence, and towns and cities and the
several civilizations of the world have one after another decayed and
perished with all their wondrous works, and glories, and aspirations.
'Who shall contend with Time--unvanquished Time,
The conqueror of conquerors, and lord
Of desolation?'
Time's chronicle is of itself proof of his character, for the very
record of his deeds he does not permit to be of long endurance. Time
was, before the earliest historian began to take note of him, before
the 'twilight of fable,' and before the most primitive symbol. Time
himself were too brief to tell of his various experiences, the full
value and purport of which we shall never know, until we have bridged
the abyss which separates the present from the future. Time and the
world, we are told, commenced life simultaneously, and their twin
birth was greeted triumphantly 'with the music of the spheres,' the
morning stars sang together rejoicingly; and it is also said that
their courses shall be simultaneously determined when the edict shall
be promulgated that 'Time shall be no more.' When will that great
event take place? is a question which has occupied the attention of
many theologians and others, who temporarily forget that 'of that day
and hour knoweth no man.' As of the end so of the beginning of Time,
there is to us no landmark, though geologists are endeavouring to
prove that they have traced some of his earliest footprints in this
world of ours. Professor Tyndall tells us that 'not for six thousand,
nor for sixty thousand, nor for six thousand thousand, but for æons,
embracing untold millions of years, this earth has been the theatre of
life and death. The riddle of the rocks has been read by the geologist
and palæontologist, from subcambrian depths to the deposits thickening
over the sea-bottoms of to-day. And upon the leaves of that stone book
are stamped the characters, plainer and surer than those formed by the
ink of history, which carry the mind back into abysses of past time
compared with which six thousand years cease to have a visual angle.'
Although Time is so vast in his operations and so truly marvellous in
his many features, it has, nevertheless, been found possible to
measure his shorter intervals with the greatest accuracy,--even to but
a few seconds in a year. It took some centuries to accomplish this
feat, but it is now surely and systematically done. The stages of
horological science are some of them remote, but they are well worth
studying. The earliest divisions of time were doubtless those made by
the operations of Nature, producing day and night,--the sun and moon
were the earliest chronometers, and, marked by them, 'the evening and
the morning were the first day.' It is even now by noting the
recurrence of certain celestial phenomena that we are enabled to
certify to ourselves the accuracy of our time-pieces, but although
the motion of the heavenly bodies is the standard of computation for
lengthened periods, it is found more convenient to reckon short terms,
such as seconds, minutes, and hours, by machinery set in motion by a
spring or by weights mathematically adjusted, and this in a word has
given birth to the science called Horology.
We can readily comprehend the division of time into days and nights,
for these, as we have said, are the natural divisions. Let us trace
the origin of more arbitrary periods, such as hours, and weeks, and
months, and years. First, then, as to days, let it be remembered that
the beginning and ending of an ordinary English day differs in several
respects from those of other nations. The Jews reckon their day, as do
also the Greeks and Italians, from sunset to sunset; the Persians from
sunrise to sunrise. The astronomical and nautical day is computed from
noon to noon, and is reckoned by 24 hours, not by twice 12,--as, for
instance, instead of writing half-past four in the morning of, we will
say, Jan. 2, the astronomer would write Jan. 1. 16 h. 30 m. Our
ordinary English day is reckoned from 12 to 12 at midnight, after the
fashion set by Ptolemy, which has this advantage over the method of
reckoning from sunrise or sunset, that the latter periods are
continually varying with the seasons of the year. The grouping of
seven days into a week is shown in Genesis, but the seventh day is
there alone specially named. The Sabbath is still kept by the Jews on
the seventh day, but Christians keep the first day of the week in
honour of Christ's resurrection, and call it the Lord's Day. After the
older planetary method, Sunday was named in honour of the Sun, Monday
of the Moon, Tuesday of Tuesco, or Mars, Wednesday of Woden or
Mercury, Thursday of Thor, Friday of Friga, Venus, Saturday of Saturn.
The Month, named after the Moon in consequence of a month being nearly
equal to the time occupied by the Moon in going through all her
changes, is again classed under the names lunar or calendar; the lunar
month is rather more than 29-1/2 days, but as the solar month is
nearly a day longer it would require more than twelve lunar months to
make a year, arbitrary additions have been therefore made to each
month, some consisting of 30, some of 31 days; and months so arranged
to form the calendar are called calendar months, twelve of which make
a year of about 365-1/4 days. Until the time of Julius Cæsar the year
was reckoned as of 365 days only, a number which after many centuries
required the addition of ninety days to rectify, he therefore ordered
one of the years to consist of 444 days, and that subsequently every
fourth year should contain 366 days. Even this very summary imperial
method was attended with its drawbacks and difficulties, for the
earth's revolution round the Sun is made in eleven minutes eleven
seconds, less than 365-1/4 days, which minutes in the course of about
1600 years required to be taken into consideration, and in 1582 Pope
Gregory XIII. took off ten days by making the 5th of October the 15th;
but the Gregorian time was not introduced into England till 1752 when
the error amounted to about eleven, so eleven days were subtracted
from 1752 leaving it only 354 days,--much to the indignation of the
illiterate people of that time, who clamoured, assembled in great mobs
to testify to their sense of the great injury inflicted upon them,
'Give us back our Eleven days,'--one of Hogarth's prints of the
'Election' exhibits a paper containing this very inscription. The fury
of the populace at being robbed of its precious time availed not; the
day after the 2nd of September, 1752, was made the 14th of September,
and from that time dated the New Style, since which the year has been
almost exactly correct. Up to 1752 the legal year began in England on
the 25th of March, and it was usual up to that day to employ two
dates, as 1750-1; but since the change of style the year has commenced
with the first of January,--nearly midwinter. As there is one day more
than fifty-two weeks in a year every year begins one day later in the
week than the preceding year; and after leap-year two days later. The
only country in Europe which still retains the Old Style is Russia,
--the difference between the styles, now twelve days, is usually
indicated by O.S. and N.S., or as in one or two of our watch
illustrations by 'Russian' and 'Gregorian.' As regards the smaller
divisions of time, it should be noted that the minute and the hour are
thus reckoned,--the Earth divided into 360 degrees, turning upon its
axis once every twenty-four hours, brings fifteen degrees under the
sun each hour, and makes those fifteen degrees of longitude equivalent
to one hour of time,--fifteen geographical miles being equivalent to
one minute of time.
The earliest horologe or hour measurer of which history makes mention
is that called the _Polos_, and the _Gnomon_. Herodotus (lib. II.)
ascribes their invention to the Babylonians, but Phavorinus claims it
for Anaximander, and Pliny for Anaximenes. The _Gnomon_, which was the
more simple and probably the more ancient instrument, consisted simply
of a staff or pillar fixed perpendicularly in a sunny place, the
shadow of which was measured by feet upon the place where it
fell,--the flight of time being computed thereby. In later times the
word _Gnomon_ was the title of the sun-dial, and it is the name still
in use for the style or finger which throws the shadow on the dial and
thus indicates the hour. The _Polos_ or _Heliotropion_ was no doubt a
superior instrument to the earliest _Gnomon_, but, from its being so
seldom mentioned, we may suppose it not to have been so generally
used. The _Polos_ consisted of a basin, in the middle of which the
perpendicular staff or finger was erected, and marked by lines the
twelve portions of the day. The _Dial_ was but another form of
_Polos_; its name indicates a Roman origin,--namely, from _Dies_, a
day, but there was a Greek sun-dial called _Sciathericum_, from
_skia_, a shadow. The invention is said to have been derived by the
Jews from the Babylonians, to whom, as we have seen, Herodotus
ascribed it, and there is mention made in the xxxviii. of Isaiah of
the dial of Ahaz,--a king who began to reign 741 B.C. The form of the
Dial of Ahaz has not been ascertained; but there is reason to believe
that the ancient Jews and the Brahmins were acquainted with the uses
of the dial and applied it to astronomical purposes. Dials were, it is
said, not known in Rome before 293 B.C., when one was set up by
Papirius Cursor the Roman General, near the Temple of Quirinus. At
Athens there is an octagonal temple of the Winds still standing, which
shows on each side the lines of a vertical dial and the centres where
the _Gnomons_ were placed. At one time the art of Dialling was most
assiduously studied; its rudiments may be described as follows:
The plane of every dial represents the plane of some great circle on
the earth, and the _Gnomon_ the earth's axis; the vertex of a right
_Gnomon_, the centre of the earth or visible heavens. The earth
itself, compared with its distance from the sun, is considered as a
point, and therefore if a small sphere of glass be placed upon any
part of the earth's surface so that its axis be parallel to the axis
of the earth, and the sphere have such lines upon it, and such plans
within it, as above described, it will show the hour of the day as
truly as if it were placed at the earth's centre, and the shell of the
earth were as transparent as glass. The diversity of the titles of
sun-dials arises from the different situation of the planes, and the
different figure of the surfaces whereon they are described, whence
they are denominated equinoctial, horizontal, vertical, polar, erect,
direct, declining, inclining, reclining, cylindrical, &c.
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| [Illustration: The Pocket Ring Dial.] |
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All the before-mentioned time-measurers were up to a certain period
non-portable, and in addition to the drawback of being unserviceable
excepting when the weather was clear and the days bright were as
useless for private purposes, as they were unadapted for the
winter-time or for night. The next step was therefore a portable dial,
but this was probably not invented until after a very long interval.
The Dial of which the above is an illustration, was probably one of
the earliest of portable time-keepers, the time being shown by means
of a hole through which the light fell on the inside, which had an
inner ring adaptable to the day and the month. Ring-dials of this
description were in common use within the last century in this
country, and were manufactured in large numbers at Sheffield when
watches were too expensive to be generally attainable. Some of these
Ring-dials were of superior construction, and were made by means of
more than one ring to serve for different latitudes. As an example of
a still greater advance in the manufacture of pocket dials, see the
illustration on the next page.
The Dial consists of a thin silver plate properly divided and marked,
and having a compass with glass cover sunk at one end of it. The
_Gnomon_ or style moves upon a hinge so as to allow of its lying flat
upon the Dial while in the pocket, and thus rendering the instrument
conveniently portable. The _Gnomon_ itself is also susceptible of
elevation or depression and the beak of the bird carved on a thin slip
of silver at its side marks the exact extent of the _Gnomon's_
elevation. This Dial is indubitably of French manufacture.
One would imagine that it was such a dial as this that Shakspeare had
in his mind's eye when he wrote the well-known passage which he put
into the mouth of Jaques, wherein that philosophic satirist describes
his meeting with a fool in the forest.
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| [Illustration: Silver Pocket Dial (in the collection of the Honble |
| Company of Clockmakers, London).] |
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'Good morrow, fool, quoth I. "No sir," quoth he,
"Call me not fool till heaven hath sent me fortune;
And then he drew _a dial from his poke_,
And looking on it with lack-lustre eye,
Says, very wisely, "It is ten o'clock:
Thus we may see," quoth he, "how the world wags:
'Tis but an hour ago since it was nine,
And after one hour more 'twill be eleven.
And so from hour to hour we ripe and ripe,
And then from hour to hour we rot and rot.
And thereby hangs a tale." When I did hear
The motley fool thus moral on the time,
My lungs began to crow like Chanticleer,
That fools should be so deep contemplative;
And I did laugh, sans intermission,
_An hour by his dial_.'
What the fool's dial was, has given rise to many conjectures, but
there is no better authority perhaps on the subject than Mr Halliwell,
from whose magnificent and elaborate folio we will make the following
very interesting extract.
'The term dial appears to have been applied in Shakspeare's time to
anything for measuring time in which the hours were marked, so that
the allusion here may be either to a watch, or to a portable journey
ring, or small dial. The expression "it is ten o'clock" is not
decisive, as it may be considered to be used merely in the sense of
the hour thus named. * * * A watch even is sometimes called a clock, *
* * and it seems by no means unlikely that the common ring dial which
has been in use for several centuries up to a comparatively recent
period, should be the dial referred to in the text.'
Whatever may have been the shape of the dial which Jaques saw drawn
from the fool's 'poke,' it is an undoubted fact that portable dials
did serve the part of time-keepers, and were in their way valuable as
such to those who had learnt how to use them. But the dial would not
do the work of the watch in an age when people no longer travel by the
waggon-load or with pack-horse, but are whirled fifty or sixty miles
in that time and have to reckon their engagements not by the day, but
by the minute. The world no longer 'wags' in jog-trot style, but
speeds at steam-pressure and sends its messages by lightning-conductor;
it consequently values its time more highly and measures it more
carefully.
The Horologe which possibly next succeeded in date the invention of
the Dial, was the Clepsydra or Water-Clock, the precise antiquity of
which is however unknown.
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| [Illustration: The Clepsydra, or Water-Clock of the Greeks.] |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
The CLEPSYDRA is so named because the water escapes from it as it were
by stealth, but in a regulated flow so as to permit of the lapse of
time being computed thereby, even as by sand running through
sand-glasses. The Clepsydra appears to have been at first used to
limit the time during which persons were allowed to speak in the
Athenian Courts of Justice; 'the first water,' says Æschines, 'being
given to the accuser, the second to the accused, and the third to the
judges,'--a special officer being appointed in the courts for the
purpose of watching the Clepsydra and stopping it when any documents
were read whereby the speaker was interrupted. The time, and
consequently the water allowed, depended upon the importance of the
case. This custom, says Phavorinus, was to prevent babbling, that such
as spake should be brief in their speeches. Ctesibius of Alexandria,
who lived about 245, invented a much improved water-clock, mentioned
by Vitruvius and Athenæus. Another kind of Clepsydra consisted of a
vessel of water having a hole in it through which the fluid gradually
escaped; a miniature boat floated upon the water and descended as the
water decreased, whilst an oar placed in the boat indicated the hour
by pointing to certain line-marks on the side of the vessel. The hole
through which the water dropped was made, we are told, through a
pearl, because it was supposed that the action of the water upon the
pearl would not, as upon other substances, enlarge the aperture, nor
would the pearl, it was imagined, be choked by the adhesion of any
other material. The chief fault of the Clepsydra as a chronometer
arose from the inequality of the flow of water, it being found to
escape more rapidly when the vessel was full than when it was becoming
empty, and also more speedily in hot weather than in cold. The
Egyptians are however said to have measured by this machine the course
of the sun; by it Tycho-Brahe computed the motion of the stars; and by
it Dudley made his maritime observations. Plato furnished the original
idea of the hydraulic organ by inventing a Clepsydra, or water-clock,
which played upon flutes the hours of the night when darkness
precluded their being shown by the index. Clepsydræ are still used in
India.
The SAND-GLASS, as we have said, is an instrument of the same
character as the Clepsydra,--the one measuring time by the fall of
water and the other by the running of sand. Sand-glasses are known to
have been used 200 B.C. The best hour-glasses, it is said, were those
in which powdered egg-shells well dried in the oven were used instead
of sand, such powder being less affected by changes in the atmosphere
than sand would be. Sand-glasses are now seldom used except on board
ship, and by domestics to compute the time for the boiling of eggs.
King Alfred's invention for measuring time by the burning of candles,
which were marked by circular lines to show the progress of the hours,
was another effort of rude skill, which however could have been but
partially successful even in the opinion of its inventor, for the
accuracy of candle-horologes is interfered with by many different
influences, prominent among which must of course have been the varying
qualities of the materials used in their manufacture, and the more or
less care with which they were guarded from the wind, so as to prevent
their guttering.
We now come to consider the date of the next grand step in the
progress of Horology,--namely, that of the invention of the _clock_.
The name itself may be derived either from the French, _la cloche_, a
bell, or from the German, _die gloke_, or _die kloke_. There is no
doubt that the word _cloche_ was meant to distinguish the instrument
which marked the hours by sounding a bell, from the _montre_ or watch,
which (derived from the Latin _monstro_, to show) merely shows the
time by its hands. In ancient books the word _cloche_ simply stands
for a bell,--the monks being accustomed to ring a bell at certain
periods marked for them by their sun-dials or hour-glasses, and
'What's o'clock?' in old writers is often merely equivalent to the
inquiry, 'What hour was last struck by bell?' The word horologe or
hour-measurer of course equally applied to the sun-dial, the
clepsydra, and the clock, and this convertibility of terms makes it
all the more difficult to trace the point at which the newer invention
began. Beckmann, in an ingenious analysis of various statements as to
the first inventors of clocks made to go by weights and wheels,
ascribes the invention to the eleventh century, but he does not
attempt to name the first clockmaker. His authority for the date is
the life of William Abbot of Hirshan, wherein there is mention made of
a machine used by the monks for measuring time, which cannot in
Beckmann's opinion have been a clepsydra. Beckmann does not believe
that clocks were of European origin, but that they were derived from
the Saracens. He founds his opinion upon a horologe described by
Trithenius which was presented by the Sultan of Egypt in 1232, to the
Emperor Frederic II. of Germany. 'In the same year,' says he, 'the
Saladin of Egypt sent by his ambassadors, as a gift to Frederic II., a
valuable machine of wonderful construction, worth more than 5000
ducats. For it appeared to resemble internally a celestial globe in
which figures of the sun, moon, and other planets, formed with the
greatest skill, moved, being impelled by weights and wheels, so that
performing their course in certain and fixed intervals, they pointed
out the hour, night and day, with infallible certainty; also the
twelve signs of the Zodiac with appropriate characters, moved with the
firmament, contained within themselves the course of the planet.'
To whom the high honour belongs of inventing the clock is, to use a
not unknown phrase, 'lost in the mists of antiquity.' All the ancients
who were reported as skilful in mechanics seem to have obtained a
modicum of credit as clock-inventors. Archimedes and Posidonius
before, the Christian era, Boëthius in the 5th century, Pacificus
about the middle of the 9th, Gerbert at the end of the 10th,
Wallingford near the beginning of the 14th, and Dondi at the end of
the 14th, have each in their turn been asserted to be the inventors of
the clock.
The sphere of Archimedes, made 200 B.C., as mentioned by Claudian, was
evidently an instrument with a maintaining power but without a
regulator, and therefore would not measure time in any other manner
than as a planetarium, turned by a handle, measures, or rather
exhibits, the respective velocities of the heavenly bodies; and the
same may be said of the sphere of Posidonius, as mentioned by Cicero
('De naturâ Deorum'). The clock of Boëthius was a clepsydra, as was
also that of Pacificus, according to some, for Bailly in his History
of Modern Astronomy asserts that Pacificus was the inventor of a clock
going by means of a weight and a balance, and if so the invention must
be ascribed to Pacificus; but Bailly gives no authority for his
assertion. Gerbert's horologe is said to have been merely a sun-dial,
and Wallingford's horologe, called the Albion, must have as much
resembled a planetarium as a clock, for the motions of all the
heavenly bodies appear to have been conducted by the maintaining
power, whatever that was, without controlling mechanism. This
instrument, made in 1326, is also described as having shown the ebb
and flow of the sea, the hours, and the minutes.
There are, however, still earlier data as to clocks in England than
this of Wallingford's, for we find that in 1288 a stone clock-tower
was erected opposite Westminster Hall with a clock which cost 800
marks, the proceeds of a fine imposed upon Ralph de Hengham, Chief
Justice of the Queen's Bench. The tower mentioned was still standing
in 1715, and in it was a clock which struck the great bell known as
Tom of Westminster so as to be heard by the people in all the law
courts. In Queen Elizabeth's time the clock was changed for a dial
upon the clock tower, which, however, bore upon its face the same
Virgilian motto, 'Discite justitiam moniti,'--referring to the fine
inflicted upon the Chief Justice for making an alteration in a record
by which a poor dependent was made to pay 13_s._ 4_d._ instead of
6_s_. 8_d_. A dial with this motto was still to be seen in Palace
Yard, Westminster, within the last dozen years, but was removed with
the houses which were then demolished to make way for the gilded
palings which have since been erected between Palace Yard and Bridge
Street, Westminster.
In 1292 a clock was placed in Canterbury Cathedral, which, according
to a statement in a Cottonian MS., cost £30, a large sum at that time.
Dante, who died in 1321, aged 57, makes the earliest mention of an
_orologio_ which struck the hour:
'Indi come orologio che _ne chiami_
Nel hora che la sposa, d'Idio surge
Amattinar lo sposo, perche l'ami.'
_Il Paradiso._--C.X.
In 1344 James Dondi constructed at Padua, by the command of Hubert,
prince of Carrara, a clock similar to Wallingford's, and thus obtained
for himself the title of _Horologius_; which, it is said, is still
borne by his descendants in Florence. In 1364 Henry de Wyck, a
German, made a clock for Charles V. of France, which was erected in
the tower of his palace. This clock was regulated by a balance, the
teeth of the crown-wheel acted upon two small levers called pallets
which projected from, and formed part of, an upright spindle or staff,
on which was fixed the balance, and the clock was regulated by
shifting the weights placed at each end of the balance.
In 1368 Edward granted protection against 'injuriam, molestiam,
violentiam, damnum, aut gravamen' to three Dutch horologers, John and
William Uneman and John Lietuyt, who had been invited to this country
from Delft.
Chaucer, who died in 1400, speaks of a cock crowing with such
regularity as to rival a clock:
'Full sikerer (surer) was his crowing in his loge
As is a clok, or any abbey orloge.'
Whether the abbey horologe referred to was really a clock in our sense
of the term, or merely the bell rung by the monks at a certain hour
indicated by the clepsydra, is matter of conjecture, but the
probability is, that clockmaking had advanced sufficiently about this
time to have given rise to Chaucer's simile. Froissart speaks of a
famous clock which struck the hours, and was remarkable for its
mechanism, and which was removed in 1332 by Philip the Hardy, duke of
Burgundy, from Courtrai to his capital at Dijon.
After this date frequent mention is made of clocks in various
histories, some of which instruments remain even to the present day.
Dr Heylin thus describes a famous clock and dial in the Cathedral of
Lunden in Denmark. 'In the dial are to be seen distinctly the year,
month, week, day, and every hour of the day throughout the year, with
the feasts, both those which are movable and fixed, together with the
motions of the sun and moon, and their passage through each degree of
the zodiac. Then for the clock, it is so framed by artificial engines
that whensoever it is to strike, two horsemen encounter one another,
giving as many blows apiece as the bell sounds hours, and on the
opening of a door there appeareth a theatre, the Virgin Mary on a
throne with Christ in her arms, and the three kings or Magi (with
their several trains) marching in order, doing humble reverence, and
presenting severally their gifts,--two trumpeters sounding all the
while, to adorn the pomp of the procession.'
The clock at Hampton Court is one of the most ancient in England, but
all that remains of the original structure is the dial and work
connected with it, facing the east, in the second court of the old
part of the building erected by Wolsey. Of the ancient body or works
there is no record, and its maker is unknown, but it bears the
initials N.O. and the date 1540.
There is a celebrated antique clock at Strasburg which is described as
striking the quarter-hours by four figures, symbols of the ages of
man;--the first being struck by a child with an apple, the second by a
youth with an arrow, the third by a man with a staff, and the fourth
by an old man with a crutch, then came Death, who struck the hour, and
thus reminded the observer that his last hour would eventually arrive.
From the evidence adduced respecting the origin and inventors of the
clock it is not unreasonable to conclude with Ferdinand Berthoud (a
Frenchman who wrote much and was a great authority upon the subject)
that such a clock as that which was constructed by Henry de Wyck for
Charles the Wise of France, was not the invention of one man, but was
the result of a series of inventions made at different times by
various persons, each of which is worthy to be considered a separate
invention. It was the simple employment of the natural force of
gravity as to the fall of bodies in free space, that paved the way to
the extreme accuracy and constancy of rate which belong to the clocks
of modern times, and the conclusion to which Mons. Berthoud arrived
respecting the progression of the essential improvements is thus
stated:--
1. Toothed wheel-work was known in ancient times, and particularly to
Archimedes, whose instrument was provided with a maintaining power,
but had no regulator or controlling mechanism.
2. The weight applied as a maintainer at first had a fly, most
probably similar to that of a kitchen-jack.
3. The ratchet-wheel and click for winding up the weight, without
detaching the teeth of the great wheel.
4. The regulation of the fly depending upon the state of the air, it
was abandoned, and a balance substituted.
5. An escapement next became indispensable, as constituting with the
balance a more regular check than a fly upon the tendency which a
falling weight has to accelerate its velocity.
6. The application of a dial-plate and hand to indicate the hours was
a consequence of the regularity introduced into the going part.
7. The striking portion, to proclaim at a distance, without the aid of
a watcher, the hour that was indicated: and this was followed by the
alarum.
8. The reduction and accommodation of all this bulky machinery to a
portable and compact size, as in watches.
Such a succession of ingenious contrivances, introduced by different
men to improve upon the first rude instrument, is perfectly analogous
to the successive improvements which have been made in the modern
clock, since that of Henry de Wyck's was constructed. Large iron
wheels, continually exposed to the oxidizing influence of the air, in
which unequal and ill-shapen teeth were cut with the inaccuracy of a
manual operation, were by no means calculated to transmit the
maintaining power with perfect regularity to the balance, supposing it
to have been a good regulator; but when it is further remembered that
the alternate direct pushes of the escape-wheel against the pallets
must have produced jerks, and destroyed, or greatly disturbed, the
regularity of this most essential part of the mechanism, great
accuracy was not to be expected; even minutes were deemed too small
portions of time to be shown by such a machine. The clock was set
daily by some person specially appointed to the office, and even then
was not to be depended upon, for forty minutes' variation in
twenty-four hours was not thought to be an ill performance.
The most ancient clocks had no pendulum such as we now see, but had
instead a balance vibrating on the top of the clock, as seen in
illustration, p. 108, which is an example of ancient clockwork.
Upon the invention of springs, in lieu of weights, as the maintaining
or motive power in clocks, which was made towards the close of the
fifteenth century, it became obvious that time-pieces might be
rendered portable, and that the new motive power, a coiled spring,
could act independently of position. This discovery was of great
importance, and yet to whom we are indebted for it is unknown; the
value of the invention became still more apparent when the fusee, or
mechanism for equalizing the variable power of a coiled spring, was
applied. Berthoud says, 'It was soon perceived that the action of the
spring being much greater at the height of its tension than at the
end, great variations in the watch resulted therefrom. This was
remedied by a mechanism called _stack-freed_, that is, a kind of
curve, by means of which the great spring of the barrel acted on a
straight spring, which opposed itself to its action, and when this
spring was nearly down, acted more feebly.' The word _stack-freed_ was
stated to be German, and therefore gave rise to a supposition that the
invention was of German origin, but the word is not to be found in a
German dictionary, and, if ever German, it was probably strictly
technical, and soon became obsolete. Berthoud has given a drawing and
description of a portable clock, probably by Jourdain, without a
fusee, and some of the modern continental watch-makers have, perhaps,
derived their idea from it of making a watch keep time without a
fusee. Up to the close of the 15th century the motive power in clocks
was always obtained by means of weights; the invention of the coiled
spring rendered them portable.
Whatever be the date or origin of the watch or portable clock, certain
it is that there was mention made of such an instrument as far back as
1494, by Gaspar Visconti, an Italian poet, who in a sonnet describes
'Certain small and portable clocks made with a little ingenuity, and
which are continually going, showing the hours, many courses of the
planets, the festivals, and striking when the time requires it.' The
sonnet is, as it were, composed by a person in love, who compares
himself to one of these clocks. One of the earliest places of watch
manufacture was Nuremberg, and foremost among its horologers was Peter
Hele, who was thus described by Doppelmayer in his 'History of the
Mathematicians and Artists of Nuremberg.'
'Peter Hele, a clockmaker, was everywhere esteemed a great artist on
account of the pocket-clocks, which, soon after the year 1500, he first
made in Nuremberg, with small wheels of steel. The invention, which with
great justice may be ascribed to him, being something new, was praised
by almost every one, even by the mathematicians of the time, with great
admiration. He died 1540. On this subject Johannes Cocclæus, in his
Commentary on the Cosmographia of Pomponius Mela, published in Nuremberg
in 1511, makes the following announcement:--"Inveniuntur in dies
subtiliora, etenim Petrus Hele, juvenis adhuc admodum, opera fecit, quæ
doctissimi admirantur mathematici, nam ex ferro parva fabricat
horologia, plurimis digesta rotulis, quæ, quocunque vertuntur, absque
ullo pondere, et monstrant et pulsant XL. horas. Etiamsi in sinu,
marsupiove contineantur."' This quotation from Cocclæus may be thus
translated:--Ingenious things are just now being invented, for Peter
Hele, as yet but a young man, hath made works which even the most
learned mathematicians admire, for he fabricates small horologes of iron
fitted with many wheels, which, whithersoever they are turned, and
without any weight, both show and strike forty hours,--whether they be
carried in the bosom or the pocket.
Doppelmayer in continuation says: 'This, already so written by
Cocclæus in 1511, shows in the clearest way, that pocket-clocks were
made at Nuremberg many years ago, and he has fairly attributed the
invention of them to this artist, since it was the most deserving of
admiration, and the newest of his time, and which will be considered
as a Nuremberg invention; whence also clocks of this kind were for a
long time called Nuremberg living eggs, because they at first used to
make them in the form of small eggs, which name is to be found in the
German translation in chapter 26 of a strange book which F. Rabelais
has left behind him. Hence it is evident how erroneous it is to
ascribe, as many do, the invention of small striking-clocks, as of
these pocket-clocks, to Isaac Habrecht, a well-known mathematician who
lived about the beginning of the last century, and dwelt at Strasburg,
whereas our Peter Hele had made them in Nuremberg 100 years before.'
The art of watch-making soon extended itself over Europe, for we find
that in France, in 1544, Francis I. enacted a statute in favour of the
corporation of master clockmakers at Paris, to the effect that no one
should be permitted to make horologes unless he should have been
previously admitted into that society. Of the most antique watches
there are some very interesting collections at the South Kensington
Museum and other places,--originally brought together by private
persons whose antiquarian knowledge has lit up the subject with
wonderful interest. It would be impossible to furnish in a volume such
as this, a regular series of such productions, showing the development
of artistic skill in the embellishment and design of watches; we leave
that duty to some future writer who shall prepare an _edition de
luxe_, and show therein, in splendid colour-printing, all the beauties
of enamelling on the precious metals, all the elegance, as well as
perhaps the oddity, of design, which are to be observed in these
highly-interesting works of art. We will, for the nonce, be content
with interspersing our pages with a few examples, not perhaps of the
highest quality in point of design, but yet worthy of notice, either
as showing variety of form or as being made valuable by historical
associations. One of the earliest specimens of very small watches
which are now extant is the one given on the next page.