WATER-CLOCKS

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 April 1927, Page 8

WATER-CLOCKS

HOW ANCIENTS RECKONED. Long before the modern clock was dreamed of by inventive genius, clever devices were contrived for measurement of time. Among the earliest of them was the sundial and its tell-tale shadow. Then for centuries man. was pleased to regulate his life by water clocks, which developed into good chronometers and were even made to strike the hour (says the New York “Tinies”).

Chaldeans, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans used water clocks, and a great variety of them were evolved, sometimes being quite elaborate in construction. But the primitive form was simply a bucket with a hole in the bottom, through which the water escaped at a more or less regular rate of flow. One of these clocks would be filled in the morning, and would usually run down at night. Naturally, the temperature would affect the works of the clock, especially if the weather approached the freezing point, and there must have been wide variations in. duration of time. The ancients were satisfied with these water clocks, however, and, instead of trying to perfect their chronological system, they devoted thought and energy to beautifying the timepieces. These clocks had floats resting on the surface of the water to mark the hours, serving a similar purpose to an indicator in a modern tank. A noteworthy specimen of the type h;fl a dial with twelve doors, one of which opened at its appointed moment and released a number of balls corresponding to the hour. The balls fell at intervals on a, drum and thus produced the effect of striking the hour. Plato, it is said, brought the first water clock to Greece, where <it was called a “clepsydra,” meaning literally “thief of water.” From Greece, the water clock went to Rome and became an accepted fixture. Caesar carried one of them to Britain, and employed it in his famous campaigns. Pompey used a water clock to time the speeches of the Roman Senators. The sundial is believed to have originated with the Chaldeans at a very early date. It served the Chaldeans and Babylonians excellently, but when it was introduced -into lands of a different latitude, the clock-makers of the time had a hard job in adapting it to their region. But the sundial spread over all the civilised,world. In some countries, there was strong opposition to dhe'ppp.triilapce, A Roman poet quaintly "denounced it as something that “cuts and hacks our days so wretchedly into small pieces?’ In recent years, sundials have been made that are complex and perplex-? ing. The great sundial before the library of Columbia University is so complicated in its reckoning that it isalleged that only thee persons in New York can read it accurately.