Timepiece

“ Very different from the bright, pretty timepieces of to-day, which go ticking away, as if running a race with time, was the clock of the olden days, as it stood, solemn and dark, in its accustomed corner, from which the strength of two men was necessary to move it, sending the sound of its slow, steady strokes into all parts of the house. ”

“ The Man Animal and Nature's Timepieces The story of the watch that you hold in your hand to-day began countless centuries ago, and is as long as the history of the human race. When our earliest ancestors, living in caves, noted the regular succession of day and night, and saw how the shadows changed regularly in length and direction as day grew on toward night, then was the first, faint, feeble germ of the beginning of time-reckoning and time-measurement. ”

“ In all this journey, covering thousands of years, one thing has made itself clear to us—the story of timepieces is not a mere mechanical story; it is a human story. Men did not put together certain pieces of wood or metal in order merely to make mechanism, but to meet a vital need. One might almost say that the story of the watch is in the watch itself. The works run and the hands move because of [108] the mainspring, which by pressing steadily forces them into motion. ”

“ While we may well marvel at the precision of the chronometer, it is equally marvelous, if not more so, that we may equip ourselves for a few dollars with [68] a timepiece which is so wonderfully accurate as to vary little more than a second per day. If one took the pains to regulate his watch carefully, any of the better makes could be adjusted to such accuracy.
There is nothing very mysterious about the mechanism of a watch. It consists merely of a train of gears which slow down the motions of the mainspring to a convenient speed ”

“ If half the time men spend in bothering over timepieces were devoted to studying the great clock of the heavens, they need not depend on such uncertain contrivances as common clocks and watches to know the time of day. ”

“ Putting Fifty Million Watches Into Service If this were purely a story of the development of timepieces as mechanisms, there would be little to add to the preceding chapter, save to detail the refinements and improvements by which a cheap, clumsy, but reliable watch gradually discarded its defects, while retaining its virtues, and the manner in which it developed into a variety of styles and sizes. Essentially, however, this is a story of Man and Time, of human needs as served by timepieces. The most perfect piece of mechanism in a showcase is like a stove without a fire ”

“ When he discovered that he made no progress with his novelties, he resumed making the old fashioned timepieces to order, and is now always cheerful and good humoured. You must know that different countries have peculiar tastes in the dials of clocks. ”

“ Modes of measuring Time among the Ancients.—The Gnomon.—The Water-Clock.—The Hour-Glass.—The Water-Clock, improved by the Persians and by the Italians.—Gerbert invents the Escapement and the moving Weights.—The Striking-bell.—Maistre Jehan des Orloges.—Jacquemart of Dijon.—The first Clock in Paris.—Earliest portable Timepiece.—Invention of the spiral Spring.—First appearance of Watches.—The Watches, or “Eggs,” of Nuremberg.—Invention of the Fusee.—Corporation of Clockmakers.—Noted Clocks at Jena, Strasburg, Lyons, &c.—Charles-Quint and Jannellus.—The Pendulum. ”

“ Ian
The clocks! Bring them! [Seizes the spade over by the house; begins to dig a grave behind the sun-dial.] Bring every one! We will bury the clocks before the sun-dial—an offering, a living sacrifice. I tell you this is great, Eloise. What is a clock? Something agreed upon and arbitrarily imposed upon us. Standard time. Not true time. Symbolizing the whole standardization of our lives. Clocks! Why, it is clockiness that makes America mechanical and mean! Clock-minded! A clock is a little machine that shuts us out from the wonder of time. ”

“ I drive the wheel madly as tho’ to o’ertake them,—
Give chase without wisdom, or wit, or avail.
The clock in the workshop,—it rests not a moment;
It points on, and ticks on: Eternity—Time;
And once someone told me the clock had a meaning,—
Its pointing and ticking had reason and rhyme.
And this too he told me,—or had I been dreaming,—
The clock wakened life in one, forces unseen,
And something besides;... I forget what; Oh, ask not!
I know not, I know not, I am a machine.
At times, when I listen, I hear the clock plainly;—
The reason of old—the old meaning—is gone! ”

“ The sense of responsibility, of importance, which such a wonderful little piece of mechanism gives to them, the alacrity with which they thenceforth note the flight of time and compare the working of all other time-pieces, is remarkable. One of the first things usually done by the juvenile with his or her watch is, curiously enough, to challenge thereby the performance of the old-established time-pieces in the house,—even the infallible old Hall Clock, a very Nestor among clocks, does not escape scrutiny. ”

“ For generation after generation such a sound, well-made time-piece shall keep accurate time, and put to shame by both its performance and the insignificant expense of keeping it in order, the instruments of, it may be, more showy appearance, but less careful construction. Such a clock descends from father to son until its own age is scarcely to be remembered, and is regarded as one of the family heir-looms,—nay, as more,—almost, we would say, as a friend familiar with all the scenes and experiences which have made up family history. ”

“ In ancient books the word cloche simply stands for a bell,—the monks being accustomed to ring a bell at certain periods marked for them by their sun-dials or hour-glasses, and 'What's o'clock?' in old writers is often merely equivalent to the inquiry, 'What hour was last struck by bell?' The word horologe or hour-measurer of course equally applied to the sun-dial, the clepsydra, and the clock, and this convertibility of terms makes it all the more difficult to trace the point at which the newer invention began. ”

“ Time's Changes—Fall-down Castles—Little Bell Waiting—When will Father Come Home?—Little Bell Weary—What the Sea said—Never more.
Longfellow beautifully asks in Hyperion, "What is Time, but the shadow of the hour-hand on a dial-plate?"
The flowers of the earth and the hearts of men are dial-plates. The shadows coming and going on them are the hour-hands; when a flower fades, or a heart ceases to beat, it is only a weight run down. The whole universe is but one immense time-piece, throbbing with innumerable wheels, heavy with weights, and wearing itself away! ”

“ Happily the clock has not received the attention of the modern sensation-monger. We are left with the heritage of the past undisturbed. He may gibe at the paint and canvas of old masters, he may deride the grace of the Greek in sculpture, but the simple mechanism of the clock symbolizing "the inaudible and noiseless foot of Time" mocks the charlatan of a little day, with oblivion tracking his scurrying heels.
The name of lantern clock may puzzle the modern collector, but its shape followed the lantern of the period, and, like the lantern, it was made to hang on the wall. ”

“ The face of the clock. The hands, like black daggers, had pointed to ten minutes of one. Ten minutes of life! Ten minutes to live! Or—less?
Silence, broken only by the reluctant click-clack, click-clack of the rosewood clock. ”

“ One of his most rational projects was to connect a musical operation with the machinery of his watches, so that all the harsh dissonances of life might be rendered tuneful, and each flitting moment fall into the abyss of the past in golden drops of harmony. If a family clock was intrusted to him for repair,--one of those tall, ancient clocks that have grown nearly allied to human nature by measuring out the lifetime of many generations,--he would take upon himself to arrange a dance or funeral procession of figures across its venerable face, representing twelve mirthful or melancholy hours. ”

“ The works are all of iron; the case was made, probably, before glass was used for such instruments, and it is not unlikely that this watch is of as old a shape as even the Nuremberg eggs. A more ornamental time-piece, of perhaps a somewhat later date, is the curious little instrument which is portrayed in our next illustration; the works of which are also of iron. It possesses the advantage of serving either as a clock or a watch, or as both, being of a portable size, and yet when set on a stand would serve as a pretty ornament to a drawing-room table. ”

“ The great advantage, it is true, which clocks have over watches and other dumb reckoners of time is, that for the most part they strike the hour—that they are as it were the mouth-pieces of time; that they not only point it to the eye, but impress it on the ear; that they ‘lend it both an understanding and a tongue.’ Time thus speaks to us in an audible and warning voice. Objects of sight are easily distinguished by the sense, and suggest useful reflections to the mind; sounds, from their intermittent nature, and perhaps other causes, appeal more to the imagination, and strike upon the heart. ”

“ It is too hideous to look at, yet you cannot look away. I sat spellbound in a pew under it for a long time. On the right hand of the clock stands a figure representing the "Genius of Time." This figure holds a gold hammer in its hand, and strikes the quarter-hours. On the other side stands Death,—a naked skeleton,—with an hour-glass. At each hour he turns his hour-glass, shakes his head, and with a hammer in his right hand strikes the hour. ”

“ On the dial of a clock in the palace of Napoleon at Malmaison, the maker has put, the words, "Non nescit reverti"; "It does not know how to go backward." It is so of the great clock of Time—it never can be turned backward. The moments come to us but once; whatever we do with them we must do as they pass, for they will never come to us again. ”

“ It is well that modern clocks have no wise saws and [Pg 32] mottoes telling of the unalterable hand of Time; "Old Time, the clock-setter, that bald sexton, Time," as Shakespeare says in King John.
Early Mechanism.—The problem for the old clockmakers who wished to supplant the primitive measurement of time by candle, by the hour-glass, and later by the sundial, was to produce a piece of mechanism which would in twenty-four hours, the prescribed period of day and night, indicate the flight of time hour by hour. ”

“ Complicated Watches are so called because besides the ordinary watch movement they possess other mechanism more or less complicated, by means of which they can indicate special portions of time,—as for instance the Chronograph, which marks on its dial the fifth of a second; the Quarter, and Half-Quarter, and Minute Repeaters, which furnish the time in the dark to within a minute, and are invaluable to invalids and blind persons; the Clock-Watch, which strikes the hours even in the pocket ”

“ It demanded craftsmanship of the highest character to create these masterpieces of horology, and the art has been continued in a separate stream to that of clockmaking up to the present day. The watch is not the small clock, nor is the clock the large watch. Whatever may have been their common origin, each has developed on lines essentially proper for the technique. As the clock has developed in mechanical perfection, so the watch has similarly kept in parallel progress towards the same ideal, that of the perfect timekeeper. ”

“ For if we suppose the time marked to be an hour, the space passed over by the minute hand, that is, the circumference of the dial, has no relation with the hour except what the artificer gave it by so constructing the watch that the minute hand would make one revolution every hour. ”

“ The Several Branches of a Great Art.—The timekeeper—whether it be the scientific astronomical clock, or the chronometer used by mariners, or the modern watch, minute in size but recording time with accuracy, or the bracket or table clock, or the long-case clock—has proceeded on parallel lines of development. ”

“ That gives them a chance of doing something." He seemed surprised that I had not brought an unfinished drawing. The minute hand of the clock had fallen over two minute marks, as they sometimes do on their downward course from three to four, and it was fast approaching four, which was the limit of the twenty minutes. We talked on, but the next time I looked at the clock I became confused, for the hour and the minute hand had merged into one, and after that I could not tell one from the other. ”

“ The dial-plate of the clock tells the hour and minute when it was drawn, and with the day of the month, which we know, and the sun’s altitude, which the shadows on the picture often supply, we may find the very latitude of the place which is represented. All stationary life stands self-delineated on the photograph:—the wind, if it blows, will exhibit its disturbing influence; the rain, if it falls, will glisten on the house-top; the still clouds will exhibit their ever-changing forms; and even the lightning’s flash will imprint its fire-streak on the sensitive tablet. ”

“ These dry facts may serve to whet the curiosity of the student in regard to the measurement of time and its origin. They add a piquancy to the clock dial as we now know it. Scientific it is, as one of man's most exact recorders of natural phenomena. That an exact timekeeper should be found in the pocket of every schoolboy would seem an astounding miracle to our ancestors two hundred years ago, or even less than a hundred years ago:
'Tis with our judgments as our watches, none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own,
writes Pope in his Essay on Criticism in 1725. ”