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Contributions from
The Museum of History and Technology:
Paper 6
On the Origin of Clockwork,
Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass
Derek J. de Solla Price
| POWER AND MOTION GEARING | [83] |
| MECHANICAL CLOCKS | [84] |
| PERPETUAL MOTION AND THE CLOCK BEFORE DE DONDI | [108] |
| THE MAGNETIC COMPASS AS A FELLOW-TRAVELER FROM CHINA | [110] |
ON THE ORIGIN OF CLOCKWORK,
PERPETUAL MOTION DEVICES
AND THE COMPASS
By Derek J. de Solla Price
| Ancestor of the mechanical clock has been thought by some to be the sundial. Actually these devices represent two different approaches to the problem of time-keeping. True ancestor of the clock is to be found among the highly complex astronomical machines which man has been building since Hellenic times to illustrate the relative motions of the heavenly bodies. This study—its findings will be used in preparing the Museum's new hall on the history of time-keeping—traces this ancestry back through 2,000 years of history on three continents. The Author: Derek J. de Solla Price wrote this paper while serving as consultant to the Museum of History and Technology of the Smithsonian Institution's United States National Museum. |
In each successive age this construction, having become lost, is, by the Sun's favour, again revealed to some one or other at his pleasure. (Sūrya Siddhānta, ed. Burgess, xiii, 18-19.)
HE histories of the mechanical clock and the magnetic compass must be accounted amongst the most tortured of all our efforts to understand the origins of man's important inventions. Ignorance has too often been replaced by conjecture, and conjecture by misquotation and the false authority of "common knowledge" engendered by the repetition of legendary histories from one generation of textbooks to the next. In what follows, I can only hope that the adding of a strong new trail and the eradication of several false and weaker ones will lead us nearer to a balanced and integrated understanding of medieval invention and the intercultural transmission of ideas.