FOR TELLING TIME

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 150, 24 March 1928, Page 22

FOR TELLING TIME

Through the ages ’man has used many methods of reckoning time. Be.ore the dawn of history he measured time by the shadows cast upon rocks—a pwnciple later worked out in the sundial. The phases of the moon divided periods and seasons. . • . The cave man. with-awakening intelligence, developed an ingenious method of time telling through ropes of grass in which knots werejtied at equal distances. He set fire to one end of the rope and crudely measured the time required in burning from one knot to another. The grass rope was a prehistoric ancestor of the ‘tune candle, with its notches cut at regular intervals, or with alternate black and white St Wheil the time candle burned to the third notch it was time to feed the baby; at the fifth notch or stripe the housewife put on the potatoes to boil for the evening meal: at the last notch the family went to bed—th*, most natural thing to do when the light tailed. In the thirteenth century there was invented the nearest approach to pres, ent-dav clocks. The word clock is a derivation of "glocken” or cloches —bells, which struck the hours..

In 1504 a young locksmith of Nurem- - bdrg, while serving a term in prison, ’made the first watch.. It was as big as a saucer and was manufactured of iron. Its accuracy, however, could not be relied on, for it lost an hour but when the lost .hour was an established* fact, the owner could estimate time quite exactly. The night watch--nien carried these huge watches, and it was for this reason ’■■hat they were . given their name. . . The next important invention in the progress towards the modern watch was a hairspring, so called because it was , fashioned out of a .pig’s bristle. The suspension in modern watches is made of wire, so fine that it resembles a. spider’s web. ; Compare the “insides” of a pig’s bristle watch with the . delicate mechanismof the twentieth century product, which, ■ in a ladv’s wrist watch, has screws so infinitesimal that a thimble . will hold ■ 20.00’J.’ Foi -me noupfl avoirdupois; , 583.333 of these screws are required. But each has a bevelled gear, a slot and a spiral thread. Its weight is twelve one-thousandths of a grain. Presentday watches contain 211 pieces, one-tnird of which are screws.