Time is racing
Find them on myspace or at http://www.sacredbonesrecords.com/releases/sbr016/.
How to grow clocks
I stumbled across an interesting piece on YouTube recently. It has only a passing relevance to this site, but it was too cool to ignore. It’s from a contributor called cdk007, whose presentation is part video, part lecture, and part software demonstration. It explores an idea that was made famous by the Reverend William Paley, an 19th century English clergyman, who argued that, just as watches are too complicated to have arisen spontaneously and must have been fabricated by a watchmaker, so life on earth must have been made by an intelligent designer. The ‘blind watchmaker’ analogy has been explored both by evolutionists as an example of an illogical and fallacious argument in favour of some god-like creator figure, and by creationists as a - perhaps initially - plausible objection to evolution. Most famously, Richard Dawkins has persuasively argued the Darwinian side, pointing out, in his ‘Blind Watchmaker’, that the forces of natural selection can produce amazing complexity.
cdk007 isn’t content to just point out the
illogicalities of the creationist argument, though.
He goes one step further, and examines the argument
using a software simulation. I love the way his
collection of mating clocks with mutating genomes
manage to enter ‘the age of pendulums’, before
evolving further into four-handed clocks.
The clocks grown by the simulation manage to
evolve - you guessed - a 24 hour dial! Notice here
the number of seconds on the left-most dial - 86,817
is close to the number of seconds in a 24 hour day.
The video can be seen here.
Linear thinking
Recently I think there have been a few more
different ways of showing time. Here’s a picture of
the clock-setting interface on an iPhone:
The illusion of a circular wheel rotating is very strong, particularly when you flick it up and down with your finger - it speeds up and slows down like a well-oiled bicycle wheel. But the display is effectively a digital clock that’s also a linear analog clock.
Measuring time as a point along a line is probably as old as angular time measurement, if not older. Early sundials from Egypt show the length of the sun’s shadow being measured on a simple graduated stick, although angular displays are also common in the ancient world. Through history the passage of time has also been marked by a change of water level, a decrease in height of a marked candle, or a change in length of a trail of slow burning incense.
A striking linear clock can be seen in Picadilly
Circus tube station in London. A metal band travels
from east to west over a fixed Mercator map of the
world, showing the mean solar time for any location.
The band itself is a 24 hour indicator, but if you
think about it, it’s clear it has to be 48 hours long
(since it has to go round the back of the
map).
There are a
number of software linear clocks around. Here’s
an old one called Stripclock that I used to run
on my Palm. (You can google for this but there’s
no current url for the author, who might be
called Fraser McCrossan) This was great because
by tapping you could zoom in closer and closer
onto the time display - either watch the seconds
speed by or follow the imperceptible movement of
the week or month.
And here’s a
more recent Flash version of the idea. Not
zoomable, but compelling in a different
way:
(The live Flash version is at http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf.)
Unlike the iPhone controls, you don’t get the sense
of any circularity in time. To the left - if you
could scroll back far enough - is the formation of
the universe; to the right, the heat death of the
solar system…
Notice that this style of display has exactly the same ‘problem’ as circular analog clocks: it’s hard to show the various time units to any proportional scale. A second is as big as a minute, although they move to the left much faster. This is a great picture of time flowing like water under a bridge.
Revolutions in time
If you’re visiting Paris, a good place to see some interesting clocks is the Musée des arts et métiers.
In 1793, the Revolutionary Government in France
decreed that the day should be divided into 10 hours
of 100 minutes, and the year into 10 months of 30
days. For a few years, clock and watch makers
designed some unusual pieces to help the population
learn and adopt to the new decimal time system.
Here’s a good example:
The single long hand with a circle at one end and a
point at the other probably shows the hours in both
old and new systems. One end points to the decimal
time, with 10 (0) being midnight, and 5 being midday,
the other end to the equivalent old-style time.
Presumably, therefore, old-style midnight (XII) is at
the bottom of the dial, so that the other end can
point to 10 (0). 1 o’clock (decimal) is about 02:20
old style, and the position of the hour hand in this
photograph suggests that the time is 0.90 (d), or
02:10 old style.
If the other brass hand is the new minute hand, it shows 80 decimal minutes past 0. In theory a time of 0.80 (d) corresponds with about 01:55, so perhaps the hands are not quite adjusted correctly - or my assumptions are incorrect.
The grey pointer indicates the calendar day - the 12th. Every day in the new Revolutionary calendar had a object or plant associated with it, so if the current month had been Pluviôse (Jan 20 ~ Feb 18), today would be Broccoli day. (For a full list, see here.)
Here’s a watch with, I expect, midnight at the
bottom:
At about 3 o’clock (decimal), or 07:15, it’s time for
croissants and café. Again it’s not clear whether the
minute hand is showing old or new minutes.
This next example is more radical. Only half the
dial is organized for the new decimal time, the other
half is defiantly quadrovigesimal
(duodecimal times two):
Presumably the long dual-purpose hour hand is used
again here, but I’m puzzled as to why only the roman
numerals I to V are used - converting to a new time
format is hard enough without having to add 5 to the
hour after midday. The shorter hand pointing to the
12 might be another old-style hour hand (how could it
work?), but the other hand pointing to the 2 could be
an old or new style minute hand. Some more research
is needed.
Intriguingly, the museum shows only 10% of its holdings at a time, with the remaining items held in a big storage facility on the outskirts of Paris.
If you can’t get to this great museum in person - to see these and other wonderful scientific objects from the past (and to eat in the excellent cafe) - the museum’s web site is worth a look.
Curitiba, Brazil
I'm a bit puzzled by this picture - it seems to be not far from midnight...
Ahoy there
The flags on the dial indicate the traditional 4 hour watches, using the flag code.
I'm fond of this chrome look, but there are also brass models.
Greenwich time
In 1852 Charles Shepherd installed a new clock outside the gate of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. This was an electrically operated clock, one of the earliest ever made, and it was controlled by a master clock mechanism inside the main building.
While Shepherd provided the engineering know-how, the original idea had come from the Astronomer Royal, George Airy. With the arrival of the railway network, England had recently found that a single time standard was needed to replace the various incompatible local times then in use across the country. Airy decided that this standard time would be provided by the Royal Observatory. His idea was to use what he called 'galvanism' or electric signalling to transmit time pulses from Greenwich to slave clocks throughout the country. The new submarine cable recently installed between Dover to Calais in 1851 raised the possibility of sending time signals almost instantly between England and France - this would allow longitude differences to be measured very accurately, for the first time.
In September 1851, Airy wrote to Shepherd asking for proposals and estimates. He included a request for the following clocks:
One automatic clock. One clock with large dial to be seen by the Public, near the Observatory entrance, and three smaller clocks, all to be moved sympathetically with the automatic clock.
He also wanted the Greenwich time ball to be electrically operated, so that it would drop down its flagpole at exactly 13:00.
By August 1852, Shepherd had built and installed the network of clocks and cables in the observatory, although the costs were considerably higher than the original estimates. Shortly after, for the first time, Greenwich mean time was transmitted along cables from Greenwich to London Bridge, and thence to clocks and receivers throughout England. The primary pulse originated from this unlikely-looking master clock in the observatory.
By 1866, time signals were sent from this clock to Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts via the new transatlantic submarine cable.
The public clock at the gate originally indicated astronomical time, in which the counting of the 24 hours of a day started at noon every day rather than midnight. This picture, from 1870, shows the clock early in the morning, although the dial is showing 18:52.
In the 20th century, the clock was changed to show Greenwich Mean Time, which it still does - it doesn't show British Summer Time. The clock is still ticking happily away today, although it's now controlled by a quartz mechanism inside the main building.
The master clocks are still on display, as are the famous series of chronometers made by John Harrison. In the shop you can buy postcards and lapel pins of the clock (but no fridge magnets!) and there's also a small 24 hour quartz clock on sale. It's like a replica, although the complexities of the original Shepherd design have been replaced by a simpler interpretation.
When attempting my own version of this clock, the hardest parts were definitely the roman numerals. I couldn't find any font which matched and had to draw them again from scratch. If you compare my copy and the original you'll notice how much better the original is. Many subtle variations in size and placement were employed to produce an acceptable solution to an intractable problem: how to make numbers of such different widths do the same job. It's not a pretty design, i have to say, but it has a good solid Victorian heaviness to it, which matches its history well.
FESTO Harmonices Mundi
From their web site:
Festo’s Technology Centre features an attraction of a symbolic nature, namely the Harmonices Mundi. This technical work of art consists of three parts - a world time clock, an astronomical clock and a glockenspiel - embodying the company’s innovative power and precision work.The Harmonices Mundi combines astronomy, mechanics, melodics and electronics. The name is based on a book of the same name written by Johannes Kepler in 1619. In this book, Kepler defines the laws that describe the structure of our planetary system. Fascinated by historical astronomy, Prof. Hans Scheurenbrand (a former member of the Managing Board) spent years working in his leisure time constructing the Harmonices Mundi for Festo.The three-part Harmonices Mundi also includes a modern glockenspiel, with 76 bells and 40 claves that can be struck to obtain various levels of sound.
With this clock the Professor is merging two cultures. The medieval desire to construct an analog simulation of the universe in clockwork, seen in many of the classic old astronomical clocks of the last 500 years, meets the modern obsession with visibility, documentation, and machine-like precision of design and manufacture. Every aspect of the clock's construction has been meticulously described and illustrated (you can buy the book here (in German)). You can also browse through this PDF (also in German), for more illustrations and a feel for the mathematical precision that's going on behind the scenes.
The superb visual design of the project can be further explored on the web site of Linden-based agency Hild Design who worked on the graphics and typography. And you'll also find an extract from Novum magazine on their site with some more luscious graphics.
It's not obvious to me whether you can visit this clock if you're passing through Esslingen, Germany. Perhaps someone can find out?
Thanks to Tommy for passing this on.
St Mark’s Venice
The clock was first installed 500 years ago, and has seen many changes and restorations in its time. In the 1850s an illuminated digital display was added for telling the time at night.
You can read more about this clock, and the controversial restoration, in English (grazie!) at Orologeria.
Venice clock Cpo St Apostopoli
I discovered this clock in Cpo SS Apostoli in Venice (between Ca D'Oro and Rialto Bridge. Can anyone explain how you use it?
The vagaries of medieval and renaissance Italian time-keeping are mentioned elsewhere on the site. My understanding is that the Italians started their counting from 1 at twilight or sunset, and counted all the way through the night, reaching 24 just before sunset (if things went like clockwork).
I don't know whether 'the authorities' run any of their surviving clocks on the original schedules, maintaining the authentic 'Italian hours', for the benefit of tourists and the inconvenience of the residents. The central pointer is similar to the other Venice clock, although perhaps less easy to read. To my eyes, this clock says about 6. It's obviously not midnight or 6 hours after sunset, so I think we can dismiss the 'Italian hours' idea. If the picture was taken at 6 or 7 in the morning (allowing for Daylight Saving Time), then the clock might either be working really well, or it's broken, the photographer was lucky enough to be there at the one time of day when the clock was reading the right time.
More likely, though, the clock is either not working or not keeping the right time. You'll have to go back and do some more research, David!
European clocks
http://www.ens-lyon.fr/RELIE/Cadrans/
Here's a wonderful clock from Stendal in Germany.
Quartz clock
Go to Chris Kent's web site to download it.
Chelsea Timemaster
Software clock for Windows
You can buy this from Active Earth.
Time over the wires
It was one of many clocks that were electrically connected to London's Greenwich Observatory. This service started in the 1850s, when Greenwich time was first provided to interested subscribers - the watchmakers, government offices, and railway operators who needed to know the exact time. In 1873, the cost of connecting your apparatus to the nearest Post Office's time server was £12 a year.
I suppose the needle would have deflected at the start of each hour. More ingenious solutions were tried to indicate the exact moment: most popular was a ball on a pole, that descended at the start of the new hour.
Sometimes, though, nothing can beat a personal service. This picture shows Ruth Belville, the Greenwich Time Lady. Her job was to set her accurate pocket watch at the main Greenwich Observatory 24 hour clock on a Monday morning, get a signed certificate from an official, and then walk around London visiting forty or fifty chronometer makers, who would then transfer the right time to their own most reliable timekeeper. She carried on doing this job from 1892 to the 1930s.
This morning, my computer asked one of Apple's computers on the other side of the world for the right time, using the Network Time Protocol to set its clock, taking less than a few seconds to do it. Just some of the everyday magic that we take for granted today.
To qualify, just make one of these
A clock which shows the time both in the great and small clock ie the 24 hour and 12 hour system. It should show the times of sunrise and sunset and also show the position of the sun and moon in the zodiac throughout the year. It should strike the quarter hours and the full hours in both 1-12 and 1-24 hour systems.
You would be given about six months to make one and submit it to the examiners, the guild masters. If it was good enough, you became a master clockmaker. The examiners would be expecting something like this, perhaps:
This example of a masterpiece clock organizes its myriad features around a hexagonal framework. On two faces there are main dials showing the time in the 'Great' (24 hour) system. On a face not visible here, there are hands showing the age and phase of the moon, and an astrolabe with sky map. The large dial shown here has five sets of numbers, and a moving sunrise/sunset/daylight indicator formed by two light and dark moving discs. Another hour hand shows either Nuremberg hours (where counting started at sunset) or Bohemian hours (where counting started at sunrise). And around the outside you can tell the time in both the Great and Small systems.
Other dials show the day of the week, and control the bell-ringing. There's a switch to choose 24 hour or 12 hour striking, so that 13 o'clock can be indicated either by 1 or 13 chimes. And on the right dial below there's a read-out of the current state of the count wheels for the chiming - notice how the gaps between the numbers are proportional to them, with wider gaps for the large numbers. This is the clockmaker's ingenious solution to the task of keeping count of how many chimes to make.
This clock's intriguing because it provides for a number of different and conflicting time standards, even at the risk of increasing its complexity. To some extent this might be because the clock is an academic exercise, rather than a cost-effective market-ready offering, but it suggests that both Nuremberg and Bohemian hours were still in use around 1650.
I hope the maker of this example qualified!
You can see this clock in the British Museum, London. It also appears in a new book, Clocks, by David Thompson, published in 2004 by the British Museum Press. The book describes some of the treasures in the Museum's clocks department, with many fine photographs by Saul Peckham.
One for the yacht
Details on the Where to buy 24h clocks page. (Thanks Francis.)
Mystery clock
No prizes for guessing the answer, except the satisfaction of being a clock wizard!
In the Navy
The TimeMaster's 8 day mechanical movement is the finest in the world, according to Chelsea Clocks, so you should expect to pay $700 for one of these. Please buy me one!
World clock
From MoCoLoCo, via The Map Room.
Venice clock
Andy took this photo, and says:
...a clock just over the Rialto bridge. There is a flea market around you but if you turn and look up, there it is. Very strange as the hours don't start/end where you would expect. I heard a strange story about this clock... I was told that the Venetians used to re-set the clock every day. When the sun rose, it was six o'clock. So at dawn, the clock was set to six. And that is where the clock sits now. It doesn't run, or at least it wasn't when I was there. Do you know if there is any truth to this?
Ryan's clock
I created a 24-hour analog clock this weekend. The clock also has a metric time dial (in 1/100 day), and a 40-hour dial (because there's 400 gradients in a full circle, 100 grads per 1/4 circle). All I need is a clock mechanism kit, and a AA battery, and to set the time, and I'm gonna show it to everybody!
Looks like an nice design.
Swedish clocks
In Sweden we have been developing new ways for people with development disorder to handle their everyday activities. A very difficult field is to handle time. Time is hard to get a grip on when you are not able to think abstract or have trouble making a plan in your mind. It's too many thinking activites involved at the same time. In Sweden we have developed several technical aids and some methods to help simplify handling time issues. One of these are 24 hour clocks.Unfortunately we do not have home sites in English that describe our work with this. The best site to get to know what we are dealing with is wwwhot.vgregion.se/trollreda/. You can click below the clock icon on "Tidshjalpmedel". Now there is a menu where you will find the Swedish word "dygnsklocka" which means 24 clock.
There are three models right now. The first one was developed in the northern region of Sweden where it hardly ever gets dark in the summer time. This created lots of trouble for people with thinking difficulties. A man who worked at a daycare center developed it to help some of his mates. Now they are selling it. It's called Pajalaklockan after the village. It has plastic bits for every half hour that you can put messages, symbols on, and they come in different colours making it possible to mark the working hours in different colours from freetime and sleeping time.
MFJ-125
The left dial shows the day of the week, the right dial shows the day of the month.
Buy it from an MFJ distributor, such as radioworld.co.uk.
Roman numeral clock
You can buy these from eacombs.com.
Unusual two-handed clock
It's got four hands. There are two hour hands, one red, one black. It will be particularly useful if you often need to know the time in two different parts of the world - perhaps the time in another office, or of a friend who lives abroad.
You can buy this 24 hour clock from Franklin Clocks.
It wouldn't be as easy to do this with a 12 hour clock face. If, for example, the black hand was pointing to 8 on a 12 hour face, and the red hand pointed to 2, you couldn't tell whether the red hand was 6 hours earlier than the black one or ahead of it.
There are interesting parallels between this clock and a few clocks that were built in the 19th century during the early days of the railway network's rapid expansion. At Bristol Corn Exchange, for example, a clock with two minute hands was installed during the 1840s.
One hand indicated the time in London, the time that Brunel's Great Western Railway kept. The other minute hand showed local time, 11 minutes slower, as kept by Bristolians.
Then, the concern was with the time kept in another town. Now, we're interested in the time on the other side of the world.
Arlene's clock
The box contained a carved wooden clock face and some parts. From the remaining parts, it appears to have been a weight driven wall clock. It has a 24 hour face with 12 at top and bottom and all numbers in Arabic numerals. A slim bodied bird (now minus its wings) on a wire appeared to have sat on top of the clock and may have been turned by some part of the mechanism. It was not however, a 'cuckoo' clock - the bird was large compared to the clock and did not leap out of the clock. The auctioneer said that the clock was a model of a European tower clock but did not remember which country or tower.
This is the clock before Arlene made some repairs.
Here it is running, after some repairs. If you've seen this type of clock before, or know anything about them, please let us know!
