#MECHANICAL CLOCK SERIES#

Turning gears would turn wheels, and pointers attached to these wheels marked the time. These clocks worked because descending weights in the clock provided force, and gear wheels transferred power. By the 1300s, artisans were building clocks for churches and cathedrals in France and Italy. Historians believe that the first mechanical clocks were made in the late 1200’s in northern Italy, but the earliest recorded weight-driven clock was found in Dunstable Priory, England, which was from the year 1283 CE. increases in trade resulted in accounts of Chinese mechanical clocks reaching Europe. However, over the course of about two centuries.

The very first mechanical clocks were developed in China, but they were very large and somewhat impractical, as they ran on water or mercury. However, they were unreliable in Europe due to its climate. Simple timekeeping devices, such as sundials and water clocks, had been used since Egyptian and Babylonian times.

#MECHANICAL CLOCK SERIES#

Mechanical clocks were the result of a series of innovations and developments that continued to create more accurate timekeeping devices. As time progressed, new clocks were produced that were more accurate and precise, more ornate, and smaller. However, the invention of mechanical clocks did not occur suddenly. The different systems of cables, axles, cogs, and weights evolved into some true masterpieces, such as the old city clock in Prague (1410).The mechanical clock and one of its most important features, the escapement, revolutionized timekeeping. No one was interested in using water because it wasn’t precise or consistent enough. The ClockĬhanges to clock technology were symptomatic of their time. The city bustled, money changed hands, and the industrious citizens couldn’t be late to an appointment or wait for other people in vain.Ĭities became echoes of clanging bells, announcing all kinds of events. Public squares started to ring bells on the hour. The rhythm of life in the city for merchants and artisans didn’t adapt to the endless dance of the sun and the moon either.īusiness demands imposed the cultivation of new values such as punctuality or efficiency. If clocks were originally designed to serve God, it didn’t take long for them to be used in the service of other gods. Time was to be dedicated to meditation, a sign of virtue. To waste time was to waste a gift from God.

This is how future ingenuity was born.įor medieval theologians, time was as important as it was irreplaceable. Clocks suddenly filled the common spaces, letting everyone in the community know when it was time to pray. Once the prayer schedule was fixed, monks had to pay attention to time. That led to more stable schedules in the monasteries. In contrast to farmers, monks had to adapt their work around prayer. The new monastic rules, much stricter than before, imposed a way of life centered on prayer. The key elements of this change were New Monasticism and urban life. From public clocks in Padua and Bologna to church clocks in Chartres and Wells, people started to perceive time in a very different way. Central and Western Europe became inundated with all types of mechanical clocks. However, something happened in the 13th, 14th, and 15th century that changed everything. Clocks weren’t common, nor well-known, nor necessary. Any other activities, both religious or secular, had to adapt to the rhythm of agricultural work. They followed the natural cycles of the seasons and the days. Most Europeans lived off the land, either cultivating crops or raising animals. Just like urban electricity ended the tyranny of the night, the clock freed busy men from the rhythm of the sun. However, the service that the sun and the moon provide is, at the same time, a kind of slavery. The measurement of days is as old as the observation of the stars. As French historian Jacques Le Goff said, time for a merchant isn’t the same as time for a farmer. The invention of the clock is, more than anything, a discovery of time. The astronomically-inspired Eastern water clocks, however, didn’t bring about the same kind of social change that mechanized clocks did in the West. The Islamic Civilization and the Chinese discovered the mysteries of time-keeping long before the Europeans. Clockwork refers to the inner workings of either mechanical devices called clocks and watches (where it is also called the movement) or other mechanisms that work similarly, using a series of gears driven by a spring or weight.

The art of clock-making, like so many other things, wasn’t born in Western Europe. Clockwork of mechanical Prim wrist watch.