Charles William Super

“ Any one who reflects soon comes to realize that he can form no concept of duration without beginning or end because it lies out of the range of experience and observation. The popular use of the word time refers exclusively to shorter and longer divisions or units within endless duration, as when we say: "I have not time to talk of this now" ”

“ Strange as it may seem in view of what they accomplished in several directions, the ancients had almost no knowledge of machinery. Water power was called into requisition to a limited extent, but the main reliance was on the muscular force of man and beast. In the East and in Egypt, the potentates tried to impress their contemporaries and posterity by the vastness of their structures; the artistic sense of the Greeks led them to make only such objects as were beautiful. ”

“ The more we rely on machinery to do our work, the more nearly we become machines ourselves. Even our educational processes have largely degenerated into mere mechanical routine. Each pupil and student is taught to do what he has seen others do. ”

“ What is generally called "nature" furnishes us with no accurate standard of measurement of either time or space. For the former the rotation of the earth on its axis gives us an almost uniform period which from time immemorial has been divided into twenty-four hours. No one has ever been able to explain why this number was chosen rather than some other, but it is wholly artificial. Not only this period, but its smaller units, had to be marked by some technical means. For this purpose water-clocks were invented in a remote period of antiquity. ”

“ It is safe to say that on the average every adult in the United States and in the most civilized countries of Europe is the possessor of a time-piece of some sort. Time may be conceived under two aspects: it may mean a continuous current of duration flowing past a point which we call the present ”

“ Railroad trains and steam vessels are run according to time schedules. Offices are opened and closed at certain hours. Employees of all classes are required to report for duty according to the clock, and their task is not completed until they have put in a fixed number of hours. New devices are constantly being placed on the market the purpose of which is to "save time" as the phrase goes. The importance that our day attaches to time is strikingly shown by the fact that for a decade Switzerland has manufactured from six to eight millions of clocks and watches annually ”

“ In the larger cities, the periods or hours were announced by the sound of a trumpet; in the country few persons cared how the hours of the night passed. The custom of proclaiming the hours of the night prevailed in some countries of Europe, especially in Germany, long after clocks had come into almost universal use. It is not known when the Romans began to divide the day into twenty-four hours. ”

“ The hour in Rome was therefore at one time of the year about seventy-five minutes in length, while the hours of the night were correspondingly shorter, and vice versa.
Every schoolboy is taught that twelve inches make a foot, but not one in a million thinks to ask what is the basis of this measurement. It must at once occur to the occasional inquirer that the average human foot is not twelve inches long. When, however, a unit of measurement has been once fixed, the rest is easy. ”

“ Physicists became convinced long ago that the only fixed standard of linear measure is some portion of the earth's circumference. No intelligent Greek or Roman from the time of Plato had any doubts about the shape of the earth. ”

“ The more intelligent people have become, the less attention they have paid to it. The defective year was brought a little nearer to the actual year by adding an intercalary month every three. The Babylonian year is supposed to have been introduced in Athens about 600 B.C. Half a century later the calendar was further improved by Cleostratus, but in all the Greek states the method of reckoning by days and months always remained a good deal wide of the mark. ”

“ While they could be used at any time of the day or night, they required constant attention, and were by no means accurate. Generally the sun and the stars were depended on when they could be seen; for in the climate of Greece and the adjoining lands there are fewer cloudy days and nights than in the more northerly regions. In modern Athens about one half the days of the year are entirely cloudless, and only thirty are noted as cloudy. The Greeks used daylight almost entirely for business and rose very early. ”

“ Soldiers divided the night into five watches, the length of which also varied with the seasons. It is not probable that they were accurately measured. This division of time is doubtless the oldest; it is several times referred to in the old testament. Sun-dials were a good deal used by the ancients. The Greeks seem to have received them from the Babylonians. Only the astronomers regarded the hours as of equal length. So far as can be known they depended upon water-clocks. ”

“ He obtained nearly the same results with Fernel as to the circumference of the earth. Since that time similar work has been going on almost uninterruptedly. In 1669 Picard measured the meridian Amiens—Malvoisine, and from it estimated the circumference of the earth to be 20,541,500 toises or fathoms. Picard's figures were used by Newton in the studies which led to the discovery of the universal law of gravitation. At this point in the investigations the question arose whether the earth is a perfect sphere or a spheroid. ”

“ Water-clocks were formerly much in vogue in the east and were sometimes very artistically constructed. Haroun al Raschid presented one to [ [w:Charlemagne|Charlemagne] that was provided with a striking mechanism and adorned with movable figures such as are now quite common. The ancient Greek designations for the time of both the day and of the night were very vague: "the full market," "candle-lighting," "the first sleep," and so on. ”

“ By regulating the pressure of the water in the tank, the hand could be made to move faster or slower when it was desired to lengthen or shorten the hours to conform to the relative proportion of daylight and darkness in the twenty-four. ”