"I suppose that was why people began making clocks."
"You don't for a moment imagine men leaped from sundials to clocks, do you?" interrogated the Scotchman quizzically.
"Oh, perhaps not such nice ones as ours," conceded the boy with easy unconcern. "Still they had to tell time somehow."
"Clocks were a long way off from suns and shadows."
"But what did come next?"
"To sundials, you mean? Well, for a long, long time people could think of nothing better. They introduced trifling remedies now and then, however. For example, in the seventeenth century they evolved a portable dial that could be carried from place to place. Sometimes this was combined with a compass; sometimes it was made in the form of a ring. It was an awkward substitute for the watch, but it was, nevertheless, great-great-great-grandfather to it. Yet advantageous as it was to be able to carry the time about with you, it did nothing to lessen the long, unmarked stretch of darkness that descended upon the earth every night. How was man to solve that difficulty?"
"How indeed?"
"That was his puzzle—his nut to crack. Throughout the ages it has been conundrums like these that have taxed human ingenuity and made of life such an alluring adventure. On the conquering of difficulties civilization has been built up. Well, man now attacked this problem of telling time. He did not aspire to narrow it down to any very fine point, for at that period of history one day was very like another, and he was a leisurely being with little to do but eat, sleep, fight or hunt. Notwithstanding this, however, he did want to know when it was noon; when it would be day. King Alfred, one of the English monarchs, hit upon a plan for telling the hours of the night by means of tall candles, made to burn a definite interval. When, for example, one of his candles burned out, he knew that four or six hours had passed. Other persons went further and had candles marked off into hours with black and white wax—"
"That was a clever scheme!"
"Clever, yes; and all very well for kings who could afford to burn wax tapers night after night. But there were, alas, many unfortunates who couldn't. Accordingly the obstacle persisted, and urged the world on to the next step up the time-telling ladder."