Time Telling through the Ages

by Harry Chase Brearley

We learn that toward the close of the thirteenth century a clock was set up in St. Paul's Cathedral in London (1286); one in Westminster, by 1288; and one in Canterbury Cathedral, by 1292. The Westminster clock and the chime of bells were put up from funds raised by a fine imposed on a chief justice who had offended the government. The clock bore as an inscription the words of Virgil: "Discite justitiam moniti," "Learn justice from my advice," and the bells were gambled away by Henry VIII! In the same century, Dante, whose wonderful poem the Commedia, (the Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise) is sometimes called the "Swan Song of the Middle Ages," since it marks the passing of the medieval times, spoke of "wheels that wound their circle in an orloge."

Chaucer speaks of a cock crowing as regularly "as a clock in an abbey orloge." And this shows, curiously, the early meaning of the word, for by the word "clock," Chaucer evidently meant the bell which struck the hour, and, very obviously, he used the word "orloge" to indicate the clock itself.

Many of these "clocks" had neither dials nor hands. They told time only by striking the hour. Sometimes in the great tower clocks there were placed automatic figures representing men in armor or even mere grotesque figures which, at the right moment, beat upon the bell. These figures were called "jacks o' the clock" or "jacquemarts" and curious specimens of them are still in existence.

The early abbey clocks did not even strike the hour but rang an alarm to awaken the monks for prayers. Here again, the alarm principle precedes the visible measurement of time; even now, as already noted, we speak of a "clock" by the old word for "bell."

In the course of the following century—the fourteenth—clocks began to appear which were really worthy of the name, and of these we have authentic details. They were to be found in many lands. One of them was built, in 1344, by Giacomo Dondi at Padua, Italy. Another was constructed in England, in 1340, by Peter Lightfoot, a monk of Glastonbury. And in 1364, Henry de Wieck, De Wyck, or de Vick, of Wurtemburg, was sent for by Charles V, King of France, to come to Paris and build a clock for the tower of the royal palace, which is now the Palais de Justice. It was finished and set up in February 1379, and there it still remains after lapse of five and a half centuries, although its present architectural surroundings were not finished until a much later date.

This venerable timepiece termed by some chroniclers "the parent of modern timekeepers," was still performing its duty as late as 1850. And so it is a matter of interesting record that its mechanism, which served to measure the passage of time in the days when the earth was generally believed to be flat and when the Eastern Division of the Roman Empire was still ruled from Byzantium, now Constantinople, has served the same purpose within the possible memory of men now living. Its bell has one grim association—it gave the signal for that frightful piece of Medicean treachery, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, planned by Catherine de Medici, the mother of the King Charles IX, when the armed retainers of the crown of France flung themselves upon the unsuspecting Huguenots and caused the streets to run red with the blood of men, women and children—a ghastly butchery of thousands of people.

As we have seen, de Vick's clock was neither the earliest made, nor among the earliest; nor, probably, did it embody any at that time new mechanical invention. It does, however, fairly and clearly typify the oldest style of clock of which we to-day have any accurate knowledge. Compare its description, then, with the clock upon your shelf.

We think of the tall-cased "grandfather's clocks" as antique; but this tower-clock of de Vick's outdoes them in antiquity by some four hundred years. And its most interesting feature is its curious likeness in mechanical principle to the clocks of modern times. Like most early clocks, it has only one hand—the hour-hand. Its ponderous movement is of iron, laboriously hand-wrought; the teeth of its wheels and pinions were cut out one by one. It was driven by a weight of five hundred pounds, the cord of which was wound round a drum, or barrel. This barrel carried, at one end, a pinion, meshing with the hour-wheel, which drove the hands; the flange at the other end of the barrel formed the great wheel, or first wheel of the train. This meshed with a pinion on the shaft of the second wheel, and this in turn with a lantern-pinion upon the shaft of the escape-wheel. All of this is, of course, essentially the modern train of gears, only with fewer wheels.