Time Telling through the Ages

by Harry Chase Brearley

The center of civilization has shifted to the north and west; from the old ring of lands around the Mediterranean to the great nations of modern Europe. Italy has become a jealous group of independent cities, great in art and commerce, but in little else. Germany is much the same, except for the lack of some few score centuries of tradition. France and Spain are already great and growing. William the Conqueror has fought and ruled and died, and the "Merry England" of song and story has grown up out of the fusion of Saxon and Norman. Chivalry and the Crusades, the times of Ivanhoe and The Talisman, are as fresh as yesterday.

And by green hedgerows and hospitable inns, Chaucer's Pilgrims are plodding onward toward the sound of Canterbury's bells. For here is the point of all our seeking—that there are clocks now in the monasteries and in the Cathedral towers. There is just one curious link of likeness between the Middle Ages and the remoter past; as it was at first at Babylon, so now in the fourteenth century the priesthood holds almost a monopoly of science and of learning.

Thus, although the sun-dial, clepsydra and sand-glass are still much used, we find ourselves at last in the time and lands of clocks. The very sound of the word "clock" gives a clue to its origin. It suggests the striking of the hour upon some bell. The French called the word cloche and the Saxons clugga, and both of these originally meant a bell.

If you will put yourself back in the picture at the beginning of the chapter, you will find yourself in a realm of sounding, pealing, chiming bells with the hours of prayer throughout the day, from matins to angelus, rung out from the belfries, and with frequent deep-toned strikings of the hour. Not even a blind man could have remained unconscious of the passage of the hours under such conditions, and time, in a sense, became more a possession of democracy although timepieces themselves were still the mark of special privilege.

Life also was beginning to hurry just a little. Very deliberate, we should call it in comparison with the mad rush of the twentieth century, and yet it began to show its growing complexity in that humanity was becoming more definitely organized and men were forced to depend more and more upon each other. In all of this, there was a slightly growing sense of the things that were to be, just as the water for some miles above Niagara begins to hasten its course under the influence of the mighty cataract over which it will at last go madly plunging.

Herein occurs another of those baffling questions, like the old-time puzzler as to whether the hen first came from the egg or the egg from the hen. One cannot help wondering to what extent the increasing accuracy of the broadening knowledge of time-keeping was the result of our complicated modern life and to what extent it was the cause. Certainly we cannot conceive of present-day affairs as being conducted save in the light of moving hands and figures upon a dial.

From the Middle Ages, then, we get our word for clock and, which is more important, we begin to get some crude application of its modern mechanical principles. They were wonderfully skilful, those medieval workmen, considering the means at their disposal, and the ingenuity of some of their clocks is still a delight, but, perhaps, for better understanding of the story, we should stop for a minute to inquire exactly what a clock means from the mechanical point of view.

A clock is a machine for keeping time. And for this there are four essentials, without any one of which there would be no clock. First, there must be a motive power to make it run; second, there must be a means of transmitting this power; third, there must be a regulating device to make the mechanism move steadily and slowly, and keep the motive power from running down too quickly; and, fourth, there must be some device to mark the time and make it known.

In a typical modern clock the power comes from the pull of a weight or the pressure of a spring—although clocks may, of course, be operated by electricity or compressed air or some other means; also, the regulator is what is known as the "escapement" and the recording device consists of the hands, the dial, and the striking mechanism. Having stated this, let us return to the past and see if we can determine how these principles came to be applied.