The First Timekeepers People say the most important invention for mankind was the wheel. I think that’s untrue – I think the invention which changed mankind most of all is the clock. The wheel is the servant of mankind, but clocks control us. Dr John C. Taylor, OBE FREng, horologist, inventor and creator of Clocktime In our 21st century world, we can know exactly what time it is, down to the second, anywhere in the world at any time. Our technology enables us to organise and measure our entire lives around 24-hour days, 7-day weeks, calendar months, and 365- or 366-day yearly cycles. We can look backwards and forwards to specific events with precision, and we bring order to our histories by dividing time into centuries, periods, epochs and other systems of chronological arrangement. Thus, our concept of time helps us make sense of – and derive meaning from – our past, our present and our future. We are reminded of time everywhere, from the clocks on the walls of our homes and workplaces, and the time settings on our personal computers, to the watches worn on our wrists and the smartphone displays at our fingertips. Time, as we conceptualise it, is exactly measured, easily interpreted, constant, reliable ... and utterly taken for granted. The idea of a world without time is unthinkable. Have you ever stopped to consider what you use to tell time, or how time is represented in your mind? Do you think of a clockface or a digital display of numbers? And do you take these representations of time as obvious, as universal? Our understanding of time was not always as it is now, and precision timekeepers are certainly a recent development in human history. Our current concept of time evolved over several millennia thanks to the curiosity, inventiveness, and hard work of early timekeepers. In fact, clocks as we recognise them have been around for only the past thousand years or so, and only in the most recent few centuries were horologists and innovative makers able to refine their work to create perfectly accurate clocks and watches (many of their stories are told here on Clocktime). Yet humans have been around for a lot longer than that. How did people conceptualise, track and represent the passage of time before the invention of clocks? Before mechanised clocks became available, people used the sun, the moon, the stars, and the elements to tell time. Telling time before clocks Humans instinctively follow the rhythm of night and day, generally engaging in work and leisure activities when it is light, and sleeping or sheltering in warmth and safety when it is dark. The sun: daytime Prehistoric peoples followed the trajectory of the sun in the sky to track the passage of time during the day. They created sundials, so that they might know how much daylight was left for their activities. Sundials are the oldest known timekeeping instruments in the world and were probably the first human-made tools devised to track time during daylight. They first appeared in Egypt some 3500 years ago, and archaeological evidence indicates that they were first used by the ancient Egyptians, ancient Mesopotamians and ancient Greeks. The observation that shadows are longer or shorter at different times of the day, depending on the sun’s position in the sky, is the principle underlying the simple and effective yet ancient method of estimating time by reference to a sundial. The dial is usually a plate of some sort, on which are marks representing different times of day. On the dial, often at its centre, is a metal or wooden stick (a gnomon), that casts a shadow across it. Throughout the day, the shadow cast by the sun moves over the dial’s markers, thus indicating the time. Time reckoned in this way is known as solar time. One of the earliest known sundials is datable to the 19th dynasty of Egypt, around 3500 BC. Made from a fragment of limestone, it is a sundial found in the Valley of the Kings.[1] The dial, measuring 178 × 152 mm across and 33 mm thick, was discovered by archaeologist Susanne Bickel of the University of Basel. Inscribed with black ink, it has twelve spaces formed by thirteen evenly spaced lines radiating from a pierced hole. A wooden or metal stick, fixed upright into this hole, would have functioned as the gnomon. The time of day was determined by reference to the markings on the dial on which the gnomon’s shadow was cast by the sun as it traversed the sky. Sundials were relied upon as the primary source for accurate timekeeping for thousands of years. During the medieval period, around AD 1300, great clocks (also known as tower and turret clocks) began to appear. These were constructed for placement on cathedrals and town halls. Sundials were used to set and correct the time on these early clocks. In 1656, Christiaan Huygens invented the domestic pendulum clock. Even after this, all clocks still had to be set locally by reference to a sundial, and people in the countryside set their clocks locally according to readings taken from a sundial in their gardens. The plates on sundials datable to the 15- and 1600s, often made of bronze, were engraved to resemble the dial of a clock with traditional chapter rings, and the shadow cast by the gnomon functioned just like the hour hand of a clock. Reading the time on a sundial can be tricky because the time indicated on the dial represents solar time. Therefore, an Equation of Time had to be used to calculate the difference between solar and local mean time. Later, many sundials had the Equation of Time engraved upon them, allowing proud owners of pocket watches to set them to local mean time. They could then use their pocket watch to set the clocks in the house. For an example of a sundial with engraved Equation of Time tables, see the bronze sundial made around 1700 by clockmaker Thomas Tompion.[2] Solar time, as represented on a sundial, is determined by the location of the sun in the sky relative to the dial’s position on Earth. By contrast, the mean (average) time is determined by the 24-hour day by which we run our clocks. Solar time can vary from mean time by up to 16 minutes either way, depending upon the time of year, and the two correlate with one another on just four days per year (in April, June, September and December). This variation of up to 16 minutes is a consequence of Earth’s elliptical orbit around the sun. Horologist Dr John C Taylor is fond of pointing out that ‘There has never been a 24-hour day in the history of the universe’. This is true. We use the 24-hour day because it is much more convenient to count the hours in whole numbers. One day on Earth is actually 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.09 seconds long. This is a sidereal day: how long it really takes the earth to rotate around the sun. Until the 1500s, people believed that the earth is the centre of the universe and that the sun rotates around the earth.[3] This is known as the geocentric model of the universe. Also, each day the earth moves in space around its orbit, it requires a bit of extra turn to come back facing the sun on the next day. As the earth travels at different speeds in its elliptical orbit, the time required to execute that extra bit of turn differs slightly from day to day. While the irregularity of the daily movement of the sun was known to the Babylonians, it was around AD 150 that Claudius Ptolemy, a Greek astronomer, ‘invented’ the Equation of Time. He is credited with this breakthrough, because he was the first to tabulate these equations in Book III of his great astronomical work, the Almagest.[4] Horologist Brian Loomes explains that before the invention of the domestic pendulum clock in 1656, the variance between solar time and mean time was of less importance to clock owners because pre-pendulum balance wheel clocks were not able to keep time accurately or consistently enough to require an Equation of Time. However, with the new pendulum clocks, which were reasonably accurate over a period of several days, it was possible for the clock owner to attain greater precision than by using a sundial with an Equation of Time. Since the invention of the pendulum, clocks have been set for an average day of 24 hours, hence the mean in Greenwich Mean Time. Within a short time of the establishment of the Greenwich Observatory in 1676, the first Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed, published his Equation of Time tables for the conversion of sundial (solar) time to mean clock time. These were indispensable to astronomers and clock owners and represent his most obvious contribution to horological development. Apparently, even Huygens saw fit to publish an Equation of Time in table form around the time that his pendulum clocks began being produced. In response, makers such as Thomas Tompion and Hilkiah Bedford created sundials for their clients, enabling them to set the time on their new pendulum clocks as precisely as possible. Exhibits of Bedford ’s bronze sundial with octagonal base, made around 1663, and Tompion’s Duke of Kent sundial and another bronze sundial, both made around 1700, are coming soon to Clocktime. Water, fire and sand: Night time The water clock is another ancient time-measuring instrument. It probably developed in response to the limitations of the sundial, as it enabled people to measure the time on cloudy days and also at night. Around 1500 BC, a water clock is mentioned for the first time in an inscription on the tomb of the Egyptian court official Amenemhet, which identifies him as its inventor. The oldest surviving water clock dates from around the same time as this inscription: between 1417 and 1379 BC, during the reign of Amenhotep III. It is from the Temple of Amun-Re, part of the Karnak temple complex near Luxor, Egypt. Evidence indicates that water clocks were often used to correctly time important events, such as the performance of religious rites and sacrifices, and that variations of this timekeeper were developed and used all over the ancient world including (but not limited to) China, India, Persia, Babylonia, Greece (the Greeks developed several inflow types, which they called 'clepsydra' around 325 BC) and Rome, and also by Native Americans and African peoples. Water clocks continued to be used through the medieval and Renaissance periods. The Italian astronomer and mathematician Galileo Galilei even used a mercury clepsydra to time his experiments on falling bodies. Around 1300, water clocks finally fell out of use thanks to the invention of mechanical clocks. Ancient combustion clocks, such as candle and incense clocks, provided another relatively reliable way to measure the passage of time indoors, especially at night and on cloudy days. The first combustion clocks appear to have originated in China around the AD 500. These are based on the principle that the passage of time can be measured by the rate at which a material is burned away. The earliest known combustion clock is the incense clock, appearing around 500 AD. This type of clock uses punk (decayed wood or fungi) or incense (usually made of sandalwood or elm) that burns at a slow and constant rate. As the material burns, it deposits ember along a path divided into sections representing specific times. Thus, the time is determined by noting the position of the ember. More elaborate versions of a basic incense clock had a weight attached to a piece of thread running through the incense stick. When the incense burned down far enough, the thread would release and the weight fell, clattering into a tray below. The noise would alert the owner that a certain amount of time had passed. Incense clocks were also used in India and were introduced to Japan from China. In Japan, they have been used since the Nara period (AD 710–794) in the form of jokoban, a type of powdered incense burner used in Buddhist temples to keep track of the passing of time based on the length of a trail of ember deposited along an imprinted path. No one knows who invented the candle clock (another type of combustion clock), but the earliest known reference to one of these is in a Chinese poem by You Jiangu and dated to AD 520. Candle clocks work very much like incense clocks. The wax for each candle is allotted so that it will burn at a constant rate within a specific period. For instance, You Jiangu’s candles were designed to burn completely in four hours. The candle is divided into sections, such as twelve sections, each measuring one inch, and, in the case of You Jiangu’s clock, representing 20 minutes. Thus, each marking represents a certain number of minutes. As the candle burns down to each marker, the owner can keep track of the time that has passed. Sometimes a weight, such as a nail, was attached to the candle at a certain marker. When the wax burned down, the weight would clatter to the floor, functioning as an alarm. In a slightly different way, people also used sand to tell the time of day and night. A sand clock, more commonly known as an hourglass, keeps track of how much time has passed (usually over one hour) by regulating the flow of sand from one container to another. Typically, an hourglass comes in the form of two glass bulbs that are connected vertically, so that sand can flow from the top bulb into the bottom bulb over the course of an hour. When the hour is up, the hourglass is then turned over so that the whole process can repeat itself. Exactly when the hourglass (or sand clock) was invented is unclear. The hourglass as we recognise it does not appear in the historical record until much later than other types of early timekeepers. It shows up during the 1300s, on the inventories of sea vessels, in the frescos of Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and in written records as well. However, it is likely that the ancient Greeks and Egyptians certainly knew of this type of timekeeper much earlier. Also, the ancient Romans were one of the first peoples to master the production of glass, so it is possible that they had some version of the sand clock. The moon and stars: Time and heavenly bodies Just as people followed the trajectory of the sun, early humans followed the journey of the moon, tracking the lunar cycle early on; these observations, subsequently informed the creation of the first monthly calendars. Observations of the stars in the night sky also made people question their place in the cosmos. During antiquity (around 700 BC to around AD 600), the technical arts of science, astronomy, mathematics and philosophy were developed. The knowledge gained served to inspire makers and enable the creation of scientific instruments that could help people not only track the passage of time but also understand the lunar and seasonal cycles as well as the place of Earth in relation to the rest of the cosmos. The first astronomical instrument that we know of is the astrolabe. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary’s entry for ‘astronomical instruments’, it is probable that the astrolabe was invented by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus, who devised a plane astrolabe around 200 BC.[5] Its purpose was to enable time to be determined at night from the positions of the stars by calculating the angular distance between heavenly bodies. Science contributor to Smithsonian Magazine, Laura Poppick, describes the astrolabe as ‘the original smart phone’, because it was a multifunctional calculating instrument: it was used as a sundial, nocturnal, surveying instrument or calendar, and was particularly useful for facilitating astrological readings and making astronomical measurements.[6] It was also used in navigation for calculating latitude. No examples of Hipparchus’ instrument survive, but scholars think that his version was probably less elaborate than the armillary sphere astrolabe created for the same purpose some 400 years later by Claudius Ptolemy, the famous Greek astronomer who lived in the Roman Empire during the century of AD 100 and is also credited with ‘inventing’ the Equation of Time (mentioned above). Ptolemy’s armillary sphere is the earliest known type of astrolabe.[7] It represented the main celestial great circles as connected, pivoting, graduated bronze rings. Constructed from rings and hoops, it revolves on its axis and demonstrates the movement of the celestial sphere around a stationary Earth at its centre. The basis for this instrument was a geocentric model of the universe, which considered Earth as the centre of the universe. During the 1500s, mathematician Nicolaus Copernicus challenged the geocentric model with his heliocentric theory. Despite this, armillary spheres continued to be used as purely mathematical instruments during the Renaissance and early modern (around 1500–1800) periods. In his book The Lost Art of Finding Our Way, Professor J. E. Huth explains how astrolabe technology survived and remained in use for so long.[8] Initially, astrolabes were used by astronomers throughout antiquity in the Greco-Roman world. Eventually, they were introduced to scholars of the Islamic world. It was scientists of the Islamic world who continued to refine the capabilities of this instrument, keeping the technology alive and reaching a new pinnacle in terms of astrolabe design by the 700s AD. Huth argues that is likely that it was their version that was then introduced to Christian Europe around AD 1000, and that during the Renaissance, the astrolabe probably became part of a suite of tools used for navigation by maritime explorers such as Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan. So how did the astrolabe work? To account for the fact that the positions of the stars and other heavenly bodies change according to a person’s location on Earth, later astrolabes (made by astronomers of both the Islamic world and Europe during the medieval and early modern periods) usually came with a series of plates associated with the different latitudes of large cities.[9] The technique used to map the celestial sphere onto the plates of an astrolabe is called stereographic projection; it allows the three-dimensional sphere to be represented on the two-dimensional surface of the flat plate.[10] During the medieval and early modern periods, astrolabes also fulfilled spiritual functions. They were used in Islam to find the direction of prayer (qibla) towards Mecca, and in Europe to facilitate astrological readings, helping the likes of princes and merchants make crucial decisions, such as whether to go to battle or agree to a financial deal. Astrolabe technology certainly inspired or at least informed the invention of astronomical clocks, the purpose of which was to tell the time while also providing information on astronomical events such as the phases of the sun and moon, and displaying the zodiac and tide times. However, it is unclear whether the maker of the first astronomical clock had access to the astrolabe technology. The first astronomical clock appeared in China during the 1000s AD. It was created by Su Sung, a Chinese astronomer, horologist and mechanical engineer, and was a hydro-mechanical (water-driven) tower clock erected in the medieval city of Kaifeng. Its features included a water-driven escapement as well as the world’s first endless power-transmitting chain drive.[11] Weight-driven clocks did not appear in Europe until c1300. The astrolabe endured for several more centuries, only falling gradually out of use when domestic pendulum clocks became more widely available in the 16- and 1700s. The Antikythera mechanism: A model of the heavens Another ancient, arguably more complex, timekeeper to appear in the ancient world was the famous and enigmatic Antikythera mechanism. While the astrolabe is an instrument for measuring what Poppick has called the ‘geography of the sky’, the Antikythera mechanism is a model of the heavens.[12] It is essentially a hand-powered orrery. Often described as humanity’s first computer, it was a complex calendar used to keep track of when astronomical positions and eclipses would occur, sometimes decades in advance.[13] It is also the earliest known geared mechanism and is the only known mechanism of this type to survive in the archaeological record. The mechanism was discovered in 1901 in a shipwreck just off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera in the Aegean sea.[14] Analysis has since revealed that the ancient ship was a Greek trading vessel carrying luxurious cargo, and that it set sail between 70 and 60 BC. It was probably on a return journey from the coast of Asia Minor coast, travelling west towards home, when it wrecked. Initially, archaeologists could make little sense of the hunks of corroded bronze until radiographic imaging, conducted in the 1970s and 1990s, revealed that the device was capable of replicating and tracking the motions of the heavens. Detailed images of the Antikythera mechanism suggest that it had thirty or so gear wheels with neat triangular teeth, as well as a ring divided into degrees (reminiscent of a protractor), enabling it to follow the movements of the moon and the sun through the zodiac. The device could also be used to predict eclipses and model the irregular orbit of the moon. Radiographic imaging has also revealed remnants of wood, indicating that it was housed in a wooden case. Scholars estimate that the Antikythera mechanism was created sometime between the late 2nd and 1st century BC. Its design was informed by ancient Greek theories of astronomy and mathematics that developed during the 2nd century BC, although it is possible that an iteration of this technology could have been conceptualised a couple centuries earlier.[15] The Roman statesman Cicero (b. 106 BC, d. 43 BC) wrote descriptions of bronze machines with globes that turn to show the motions of the heavens (Solly 2023). He did not provide any technical details of how they worked, but a couple of his descriptions of these devices suggest that they used the Antikythera mechanism or a device similar to it. He attributed one of these machines to Posidonius (b. 135 BC, d. 51 BC), a Greek polymath. Scholars have speculated that the Antikythera mechanism could have been made by Posidonius, because he was living and had a workshop on Rhodes in the Dodecanese (just off the coast of Asia Minor) when the ship could have stopped at the island as part of its trade route. Scholars also suggest that perhaps the Antikythera mechanism was being shipped from Rhodes to one of Posidonius’ wealthy patrons when the ship sank. Another theory attributes the mechanism to the Greek mathematician and inventor Archimedes (b. 287 BC, d. 212 BC) from Syracuse (Solly, 2023). This suggestion is also based on Cicero’s writings, specifically his description of another similar device that he said had been constructed by Archimedes. Although Archimedes was active about 200 years before the Antikythera mechanism was made, it is certainly possible (but not provable) that he could have invented or conceptualised a prototypical and possibly simpler model of the heavens, using bronze gearwheels. The first mechanical clocks The need for a more accurate timekeeper may very well have been inspired by God. That is to say, the need for an accurate timekeeper came from the Christian monasteries. At the start of the 600s AD, Pope Sabinian (b. 530 AD, d. 22 February 606 AD) created a tradition of ringing monastery bells seven times in 24 hours to signal the canonical hours.[16] This practice called the clergy to prayer, and, as a result, their lives – as well as the lives of all those in the surrounding community – began to be regulated by the sound of bells. The practice of sounding out the canonical hours to regulate work, rest and prayer soon spread and informed the function of the first ‘clocks’. By the medieval period, bell-ringing turret clocks, being the first mechanical clocks (because the bell ringing was automated), began to appear throughout Europe. Turret clocks were also known as tower or cathedral clocks because they were designed to be mounted high on a building in a central location. Typically, they appeared on the towers of cathedrals (an example is the Salisbury Cathedral clock, discussed below) and in town centres. They kept time for the whole surrounding community. Unfortunately, people were still reliant on sundials and water and combustion clocks for the setting of their new mechanical turret clocks. This meant that everyone set their clock by local solar time (there was no standardised mean time back then), and thus there was no consistency in the time from one area to the next. So how did people ensure that the canonical hours were being run at the correct intervals? The mechanical minds of the time sought to improve upon this situation and therefore came up with the mechanical weight-driven turret clock. These worked effectively as alarms which signalled to the bellringer that it was time to sound the bells. Turret clocks did not represent time visually. In fact, they could not be said to have been ‘read’, as they did not have the hands and dials familiar to us on analogue clocks today. Instead, they indicated the passage of time by the striking of bells on the hour (once every 60 minutes). Over time, the costs of using bellringers became very expensive, and their service sometimes proved unreliable. The story goes that a bellringer in Montpellier in 1410 was so bad at ringing the hours correctly that they replaced him with a hammer that would strike the bells automatically. By the late medieval period (around the 1300s), the weight-driven clocks had developed into automatic timekeepers, without any need for human agency. Turret clocks, such as the Salisbury Cathedral clock, were used to regulate daily prayer and so enabled churches and cathedrals to broadcast important times and durations by using mechanical bell-ringing devices. This technology was made possible by the invention of the mechanical escapement. There is no way of knowing exactly when the mechanical escapement was invented, but it is probable that it was developed sometime during the 1200s, around the time that the first turret clocks were constructed. The earliest reference to a true mechanical escapement comes from Richard of Wallingford’s manuscript 'Tractatus Horologii Astronomici' written in 1327. In it, he describes the escapement of the turret clock at the Abbey of St Albans. Apparently, this clock contained a ‘strob’ escapement, which is a variation of the verge escapement. The strob escapement features two escape wheels on the same axle, with alternating radial teeth. The lack of a balance spring in this mechanism meant that there was no natural beat: it had a long beat of nearly 11 seconds. Consequently, the timekeeping of turret clocks was very inaccurate. This was not a huge impediment, however, as medeival timetellers did not require the level of precision timekeeping that we demand and take for granted now: medieval daily life was not scheduled to the minute (or second) as our own hectic 21st century lives are. England’s first mechanical clock: The Salisbury Cathedral clock (1386) Built in 1386, the Salisbury Cathedral clock is typical of the first mechanical turret clocks that appeared on the European continent in the late medieval period during the 1300s. It enjoys the distinction of being England’s first mechanical clock and is currently the world’s oldest working clock. Construction began on Salisbury’s Cathedral in 1220, and the edifice opened its doors to parishioners on 29 September 1258. It is believed that the Salisbury Cathedral clock was designed and built by the three clockmakers from Delft (South Holland, Netherlands), Johannes and Williemus Vrieman and Johannes Jietuijt. The clock’s rather monumental frame is made from hand-wrought iron and measures 1.24 m tall by 1.29 m wide by 1.06 m deep. The clock is dated by the existence of an indenture, signed during the reign of King Richard II in 1386, which provided for the maintenance of a clock in the bell tower of the Cathedral. This was during the period that Bishop Ralph Erghum was serving as the Bishop of Salisbury, and it has been suggested that Erghum played a fundamental role in the clock’s production. The clock was controlled by an escapement and foliot balance (weighted bar). It was driven by falling weights which had to be wound once a day. Its movement is separated into two sections, with the going train on the right (III side) and the hour striking train on the left (IX side). The striking train, the great wheel and the main gear system are believed to be original and made during the 1300s. Improvements and repairs were certainly made over time, as some of the construction appears to date to the 15- and 1600s. Not too long after the invention of the pendulum in 1656, the clock was converted to pendulum regulation. The Salisbury Cathedral clock has had a rather eventful life. In 1645, during the English Civil Wars, the Cathedral was occupied by Parliamentary forces and then attacked by Royalists, who set the Cathedral’s tower on fire, forcing their enemies to surrender. In 1789, architect James Wyatt was commissioned to remodel the Cathedral. As part of his programme, he demolished the Cathedral’s original clock tower. The original clock was then moved to the first stage of the central tower of the Cathedral. Wyatt installed a new clock the following year, in 1790, and its predecessor was stowed in the corner, where it was forgotten, gathering dust for the next 130 years or so. In 1929, horological enthusiast T. R. Robinson visited the Cathedral and asked to see the newer clock’s movement. He noticed the original movement in the corner, and by so doing, essentially rediscovered the original medieval clock. The original clock was subsequently shown in static exhibition from 1931 to 1955. In 1955, an ambitious restoration project was proposed. The following year, Messrs John Smith & Sons of Derby were commissioned to restore the original clock. They disassembled the clock and assessed its condition with the help of radiographic imaging carried out by Rolls Royce. They converted the clock back to its pre-pendulum form, restoring it to its original form of the 1300s. Old paint was also removed to reveal some of the original markings used during its construction in 1386. Punch marks were found at the tip of each tooth, indicating how the movement’s wheels were marked out with dividers, cut, and then shaped with hand tools.[17] On the 18th of July 1956, the clock was re-started by T. R. Robinson. It was now functional again. The Salisbury Cathedral clock has the distinction of being the oldest piece of machinery in its original condition and still operating in England. The first domestic clocks Making the public private The first domestic clocks were miniaturised versions of turret clocks. Typically, the clockwork was contained in a metal frame with posts at the corners. These clocks were hung on the wall so that the two weight-driven trains could hang below them. Domestic clocks first appear in the courts of Europe during the early Renaissance (during the 1300s), and the first spring-driven clock appears around 1430. They were seen as one of the latest technological marvels and were incredibly expensive. Their development was a court-driven phenomenon fuelled by the competition and conspicuous consumption of the European ruling class, who actively coveted and gifted objects of splendour to express their status and court favours.[18] Some of the earliest domestic clocks were made in Germany, and the Iron Wall Clock, made around 1500 and exhibited here on Clocktime, is a beautiful example of the Gothic style. This clock was incredibly expensive as it took considerable blacksmithing skills to produce. With the arrival of these small mechanical marvels, numerous technical and stylistic innovations soon followed. The first clock-watches appeared in the German cities of Augsburg and Nuremberg around 1500. Also, in 1525, Polish clockmaker Jacob Zech made the first clock to incorporate a fusee. This technology also came to Britain, and Taylor et al. explain that clockmaking skills were introduced to Britain by immigrant clockmakers during this time.[19] Many were escaping the religious intolerance sweeping continental Europe. Others simply came to take advantage of commercial opportunities. All brought their knowledge and distinct styles of clockmaking with them, which they passed on to British craftsmen. These craftsmen absorbed such influences, thus developing a distinctive style of British clock making and ultimately driving the London clock trade. Excellent examples of early British clocks by immigrant makers include the exquisite Astrological Table Clock, made around 1600 by Flemish clockmaker Nicholas Vallin. It not only told the time, but also indicated the phase of the moon and the times of high tide in London. Taylor has described this clock as being ‘Made for an elite client … designed to be placed on a table, where its complicated additions could be consulted closely…’[20] While these clocks were inarguably beautiful, they still were not very accurate or reliable. By the end of the day, they were usually off by a quarter of an hour and were in constant need of repair and servicing. Despite advances, these clocks were not readily accessible to the wider domestic market. They were indisputably luxury items: costly to produce and expensive to purchase and maintain. In sum, domestic clockmaking was still very much in its infancy during the 1500s. It was not even an industry (in its own right) – just a branch of the blacksmiths’ trade. The lantern clock: clocks come home The first truly English domestic clocks were introduced to the domestic market around 1610. London clockmaker, Robert Harvey is credited with their design, known as the lantern clock. While the lantern clock design is reminiscent of the Gothic Iron Wall Clock (discussed above), Harvey simplified the construction and reduced costs by foregoing the use of iron for the frame and by batch producing brass castings, which enabled him to produce his lantern clocks in considerable numbers. Harvey’s Lantern Clock, made around 1610 and exhibited here on Clocktime, appears to be the earliest known surviving English lantern clock, as well as the earliest surviving domestic clock of English design. While early lantern clocks may have been less expensive to produce, they were still limited as timekeepers. They were powered by a verge arbor escapement, which was timed by an inertial balance wheel. This means that they were not very accurate and could only run for 8–12 hours at best until they needed winding. Also, the dial usually only had one hour hand with which to indicate the time. While some do feature a minute hand, these are usually later additions, as the early clocks were not accurate enough to warrant such a feature. After Huygens invented the domestic pendulum clock in 1656, many lantern clocks were adapted to accommodate a pendulum to improve timekeeping. Still, the lantern clock design was revolutionary in that it expanded access to domestic clocks. No longer were clocks the exclusive playthings, executive toys and diplomatic gifts of monarchs and aristocrats. They were now accessible to yeoman, appearing in homes and public houses throughout Great Britain. Then, in 1656, the invention of the domestic pendulum clock changed everything. The pendulum was groundbreaking because it made timekeeping more accurate than it had ever been before. This single invention expanded and drove the emerging London clock business even further, helping it to become arguably the most innovative and important clockmaking market of its time. Working by candlelight with handmade tools, London clockmakers strove to find ways to make more commercially appealing and more accurate clocks for less money. In so doing, they contributed immensely to horological development as well as to advances in navigation. Less than a century later, in 1726, a carpenter from Yorkshire by the name of John Harrison revolutionised timekeeping by creating his precision wooden regulators incorporating his grasshopper escapement and gridiron pendulum inventions. Harrison’s regulators would remain the world’s most accurate timekeepers for the next 150 years. One of them, the Wooden Regulator, dated to 1726, is exhibited here on Clocktime. Harrison would go on to solve the problem of longitude in the latter 1700s, and his horological inventions would lay the foundation for precision timekeeping as we know it today, and also to inventions such as the Global Positioning System (GPS). Thus, it was the invention and ongoing refinement of the domestic pendulum clock that enabled the opening up of the entire world. Next time you check the time, or consult Google maps for directions, think about how new and hard won our modern relationship with time is. Then, imagine an age when the precise time was not easily accessible, easily understood or necessarily required: a time before time zones and mean time; a time before the clock face; a time that was represented by waxing and waning shadows, water trickling, and embers burning down. Think about a time regulated by the rhythm of the day and night, and a time when we looked to the sun, moon and stars to make sense of our lives and our place in the cosmos. Dr Kristin Leith, Senior Curator of Clocktime November 2023 End Notes [1] Archaeology 2013. [2] Coming soon to Clocktime; Carter 2022, 188–197, Catalogue No. 28; Davis 2003, 135–144; Evans et al. 2013, 557–558; Garnier and Hollis 2018, 370–371, Catalogue No. 114; Taylor et al. 2019, 27, Exhibit No. 4:4. [3] It was not until the Renaissance, that the Polish mathematician and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (b. 1473, d. 1543) theorised a heliocentric model of the universe that placed the sun at its centre. Until then, people believed that the sun rotated around the earth (what is known as a geocentric model of the universe). Copernicus heavily influenced the Italian astronomer and mathematician Galileo Galilei, who was the first to recognise the isochronous swing of a pendulum and to conceptualise the escapement. [4] Toomer 1998, 153–156. [5] Toomer and Jones 2016; also see Neugebauer 1949. [6] Poppick 2017. [7] Kunitzsch 1994; Rome 1927. [8] Huth 2015. [9] For astrolabes dating around 1400, see Turner 1985 and 1987. [10] Although Ptolemy designed his armillary sphere based on a flawed representation of the universe, it is impressive to note that he explained the underlying mathematical theory of stereographic projection in his Planispherium, thus establishing, as early as the AD 100, that stereographic projection is a characteristic of the astrolabe. [11] Burstall et al. 1963; Lienhard 1998–2018. [12] Poppick 2017; also see Freeth et al. 2021. [13] Iversen 2017; Marchant 2015. [14] Solly 2023. [15] Allen 2007. [16] Mann 2007, 251–258. For a brief overview of Pope Sabinian's life and accomplishments, see the Pope History website. [17] Although Smith & Sons replaced the Salisbury Cathedral clock’s later pendulum and recoil escapement with a new foliot and verge based on the style of the Dover Castle clock, there is no way of knowing if these additions accurately resemble the original parts (see Horologica 2002–2023). [18] Koeppe 2019; Plassmeyer 2019. [19] Taylor et al. 2019, 4. [20] Taylor et al. 2019, 7. References Allen, M. 2007. ‘Were there others? The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project.’ http://www.antikythera-mechanism.gr/ Archaeology. 2013. ‘A 13th-century limestone sundial is one of the earliest timekeeping devices discovered in Ancient Egypt’ in Archaeology Magazine. A publication of the Archaeological Institute of America. https://www.archaeology.org/issues/99-1307/artifact/935-egypt-limestone-sundial-valley-kings Burstall, A. F., W. E. Lansdale and P. Elliott. 1963. ‘A working model of the mechanical escapement in Su Sung’s astronomical clock tower’ in Nature 199: 1242–1244. Carter, J. 2022. The John C Taylor Collection: Part III (Selling Exhibition Catalogue, Carter Marsh & Co.). Winchester: Carter Marsh & Co. Davis, J. 2003. ‘The Equation of Time as shown on sundials’ in Bulletin of the British Sundial Society XVI: 135–144. Evans, J., J. Carter and B. Wright. 2013. Thomas Tompion – 300 Years: A celebration of the life and work of Thomas Tompion. Walter Lane Publishing. Freeth, T., D. Higgon, A. Dacanalis, L. MacDonald, M. Georgakopoulou and A. Wojcik. 12 March 2021. ‘A model of the cosmos in the ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism’ in Nature: Scientific Reports 11: Article number 5821. Horologica. 2002–2023. ‘World’s oldest clock? Probably.’ https://www.horologica.co.uk/horology/Salisbury.html. Huth, J. E. 2015. The Lost Art of Finding Our Way. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press. Iversen, P. A. 2017. ‘The calendar on the Antikythera mechanism and the Corinthian family of calendar’ in Hesperia 86(1): 129–203. Koeppe, W. 2019. ‘Clocks and automata: The art of technical development’ in Koeppe, W. (editor). Making Marvels: Science and splendour at the courts of Europe. New York, NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art. pp. 195–203. Kunitzsch, P. 1994. Maslama’s Notes on Ptolemy’s Planisphaerium and Related Texts (Sitzungsberichte/Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse). In Kommission bei C.H. Beck. Lienhard, J. H. 1998–2018. ‘No. 120: Su-sung’s clock.’ University of Houston. https://www.uh.edu/engines/epi120.htm. Mann, H. K. 2007. The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages. Rockville, MD: Wildside Press. Marchant, J. February 2015. ‘Decoding the Antiythera mechanism, the first computer: Hidden inscriptions offer new clues to the origins of a mysterious astronomical mechanism’ in Smithsonian Magazine. Neugebauer, O. 1949. Isis. pp. 240–256 (for plane astrolabe). Plassmeyer, P. 2019. ‘Scientific instruments as courtly objects’ in Koeppe, W. (editor) Making Marvels: Science and splendour at the courts of Europe. New York, NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art. pp. 113–120. Poppick, L. 31 January 2017. ‘The story of the astrolabe, the original smart phone’ in Smithsonian Magazine. Rome, A. 1927. Annales de la Société Scientifique de Bruxelles. pp. 77–102 (for armillary astrolabe). Solly, M. 28 June 2023. ‘The real history behind the Archimedes Dial in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”: a device called the Antikythera mechanism is the true life for the object at the center of the franchise’s latest installment’ in Smithsonian Magazine. Taylor, J. C., K. Leith and T. Phillipson. 2019. The Luxury of Time: Clocks from 1550–1750. Isle of Man: Fromanteel Ltd. Toomer, G. J. 1998. Ptolemy’s Almagest. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Toomer, G. J. and A. Jones. March 2016. Oxford Classical Dictionary online, entry ‘astronomical instruments’. Turner, A. J. 1985. The Time Museum, Volume 1, Time Measuring Instruments: Astrolabes, astrolabe-related instruments. Wilmington, DE: Rockford. pp. 128–131. Turner, A. J. 1987. Early Scientific Instruments: Europe 1400–. London: Sotheby’s Publications. pp. 39–40.Garnier, R. and L. Hollis. 2018. Innovation & Collaboration: The early development of the pendulum clock in London. Isle of Man: Fromanteel Ltd. Image Credits A 19th Dynasty, 13th-century BC limestone sundial inscribed with black ink. Discovered in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt. 7 in wide, 6 in tall, 1.3 in thick. Courtesy University of Basel, Egyptology Early Egyptian water clock, 1415-1380 BC. Inventory No.: 1923-48 © Science Museum Group, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, https://www.scienceandsociety.co.uk/results.asp?image=10326214&itemw=4&itemf=0001&itemstep=1&itemx=3 Ancient Persian Water Clock used in Qanat of Gonabad Zibad 2500 years ago. Maahmaah . persian tools, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ancient_water_clock_used_in_qanat_of_gonabad_2500_years_ago.JPG Chinese fire clock. Unknown, Early 19th century. ID: ZAA0758 © National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, Foulkes Collection, CC BY-NC-ND 3.0, https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-212049 Chinese incense clock with one extra tray and maze made by Ming Hsin, Chao, China, 1600-1950. Object Number: 1952-184, Credit: Mr. F. H. Nash, Science Museum Group © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum , CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co729/chinese-incense-clock-clocks Folio from Kitab fi ma`arifat al-hiyal al-handisaya (The book of knowledge of ingenious mechanical devices) Automata by al-Jazari (d. 1206); recto: A candle clock; verso: text. (Artist) Farruk ibn Abd al-Latif (CB), Folio fromKitab fi ma`arifat al-hiyal al-handisaya, 1206, Accession number: F1930.71. Purchase — Charles Lang Freer Endowment, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, https://collections.si.edu/search/detail/edanmdm:fsg_F1930.71 Candle clock ca. 18th century; Candle in front of scale, engraved in metal applique/holder hung on the wall. de:Benutzer:Flyout, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kerzenuhr.jpg 24 inch hour glass with baluster supports. Unknown maker. Unknown Date. Mr. P. Webster, Science Museum Group © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co667/24-inch-hour-glass-with-baluster-supports-hourglass Hipparchus, Greek astronomer and mathematician. F033/2687 Science Source / Science Photo Library Ptolémée, 1475 / 1500 (4e quart du XVe siècle) Gand, Juste de Berruguete, Pedro Pays-Bas du Sud, Musée du Louvre, Département des Peintures, MI 657 - https://collections.louvre.fr/ark:/53355/cl010064735 Islamic Astrolabe, Unsigned without date, 901-1100 CE, Science Museum Group Collection © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co57101/islamic-astrolabe-astrolabe Antikythera mechanism, artwork. C017/7188, JOSE ANTONIO PEÑAS / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Mechanical escapement of the Wallingford Clock at St Albans Cathedral. St Albans Museums, the model itself is now on display in St Albans Cathedral Golden Book of St Albans, Walsingham, Thomas; Wylum, William de;(joint authorship), England [St Albans]; 1380. British Library Board 29/08/2023, Shelfmark: Cotton Nero D. VII, c12741-10 Salisbury Cathedral, medieval clock. Rwendland, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Salisbury_Cathedral,_medieval_clock.JPG Table clock of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, c. 1430, gilt brass. Daderot, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons