Nevertheless, it, too, proved to have certain faults. After a time, people noticed the interesting fact that water ran faster from a full vessel than from one which was nearly empty; this was, of course, because of the greater pressure. Since such a variation interfered with calculations, they hit upon the idea of a double vessel; the larger one below containing a float which rose as the vessel filled, thus marking the hours upon the scale, and the smaller one above, the one from which the water dripped, being kept constantly filled to the point of overflow.
This improved form of clepsydra opened a field of fascinating possibilities in time-recording—it gave the chance to make use of a machine. There is, perhaps, no more interesting point in studying human development than to see the steady, inevitable way in which mankind from its cave-dwelling days has tended toward machinery. Roughly, this progress may be characterized as of three stages.
First. Primitive man—an upright-standing animal, naked, unarmed, weak as compared with some creatures, slow as compared with others, clumsy as compared with still others—a creature with many physical disadvantages, but with the best brain in the animal kingdom.
Second. The tool-using man, who had begun to grasp weapons and to fashion implements, thus supplementing his natural abilities by artificial means.
Third. The machine-making man, who has fashioned to himself a mechanical "body" of incredible powers—that is to say, he has learned to intensify his own powers through artificial means which he has invented, as when he made the telescope to give himself greater vision; he has made inventions by means of which he can outrun the antelopes, outfly the birds, outswim the fishes, outgaze the eagles, and overmatch the elephants in sheer physical force—he can turn night into day, can send his voice across the continent, can strike crushing blows at a distance of many miles and can carry the movements of the stars in his pocket. Some phases of this third stage were foreshadowed when man first applied wheels and pulleys to his clepsydra.
Here, then, was water steadily raised or lowered by means of uniform dropping; here was a float whose motion was controlled by that of the water; here, in fact, was water-power with a means for applying it. Attach a cord to the float, cause it to turn a wheel by use of the pulley-principle, and the motion of the wheel would indicate the time. Still better, rig up a turning-pointer, increase its speed through the use of toothed gear-wheels, place it in front of a stationary disk divided to indicate the hours, and now the apparatus looked not unlike a modern clock. Or attach a bell and let it be caused to ring at a certain point in the motion—what was that but an alarm-clock? Ctesibus of Alexandra was the one who is believed first to have applied the toothed wheels to the clepsydra and this was about 140 B. C.
Clepsydrae were expensive of course; accurate mechanical work was never cheap until modern times. Cunning craftsmen spent their time upon costly decorations, and these water-clocks became triumphs of the jeweler's art, a gift for kings. Therefore, like the sun-dial, they drifted into Rome—that vast maelstrom of the ancient world. Imagine a great walled city of low flat-roofed buildings, with fronts and porches of great columns, a town mostly of stone and much of it of marble, gleaming white under the bright Italian sun, the streets thronged with men in tunics and togas and here and there some person of importance driving by, standing erect in his chariot drawn by four horses harnessed abreast. And statues everywhere, in the streets and about the buildings and in cool courtyards and gardens among green leaves. The ancients thought of sculpture as an outdoor thing, and where we have one statue in the streets or public places of our cities, they had a hundred. We treasure the remains of them as artistic wonders in our museums, but they put them indoors and out as common ornaments, and lived among them.