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HISTORY OF HISTORY OF CLOCKS
 
 
Before AD 1200
13th - 16th century
     Clockwork in Europe
     Domestic clocks

16th - 18th century
To be completed



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Clockwork in Europe: 13th - 14th century

Europe at the end of the Middle Ages is busy trying to capture time. The underlying aim is as much astronomical (to reflect the movement of the heavenly bodies) as it is to do with the more mundane task of measuring everybody's day. But the attraction of that achievement is recognized too. A textbook on astronomy, written by 'Robert the Englishman' in 1271, says that 'clockmakers are trying to make a wheel which will make one complete revolution' in each day, but that 'they cannot quite perfect their work'.

What prevents them even beginning to perfect their work is the lack of an escapement. But a practical version of this dates from only a few years later.
 



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A working escapement is invented in about 1275. The process allows a toothed wheel to turn, one tooth at a time, by successive teeth catching against knobs projecting from an upright rod which oscillates back and forth. The speed of its oscillation is regulated by a horizontal bar (known as a foliot) attached to the top of the rod. The time taken in the foliot's swing can be regulated by moving weights in or out on each arm.

The function of the foliot is the same as that of the pendulum in modern clocks, but it is less efficient in that gravity is not helping it to oscillate. A very heavy weight is needed to power the clock, involving massive machinery and much friction.
 

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Nevertheless the foliot works to a degree acceptable at the time (a clock in the Middle Ages is counted a good timekeeper if it loses or gains only a quarter of an hour a day), and in the 14th century there are increasingly frequent references to clocks in European cities. A particularly elaborate one is built between 1348 and 1364 in Padua by Giovanni de' Dondi, a professor of astronomy at the university who writes a detailed description of his clock. A 14th-century manuscript of his text has the earliest illustration of a clock mechanism with its escapement.

The world's three oldest surviving examples of clockwork date from the last years of the 14th century.
 

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The famous clock in Salisbury cathedral, installed by 1386 and still working today with its original mechanism, is a very plain piece of machinery. It has no face, being designed only to strike the hours. Striking is the main function of all early clocks (the word has links with the French cloche, meaning 'bell').

In 1389 a great clock is installed above a bridge spanning a street in Rouen. It remains one of the famous sights of the city, though its glorious gilded dial is a later addition and its foliot has been replaced by a pendulum (in 1713). The historical distinction of the Rouen clock is that it is the first machine designed to strike the quarter-hours.
 

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In 1392 the bishop of Wells instals a clock in his cathedral. The bishop has previously been in Salisbury, and the same engineer seems to have made the new clock. It not only strikes the quarters. It steals a march on Rouen by having a dial, showing the movement of astronomical bodies.

With escapements, chiming mechanisms and dials, clocks are now set to evolve into their more familiar selves. And the telling of time soon alters people's perceptions of time itself. Hours, minutes and seconds are units which only come into existence as the ability to measure them develops.
 

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Domestic clocks: 15th century

After the success of the clocks in Europe's cathedrals in the late 14th century, and the introduction of the clock face in places such as Wells, kings and nobles naturally want this impressive technology at home.

The first domestic clocks, in the early 15th century, are miniature versions of the cathedral clocks - powered by hanging weights, regulated by escapements with a foliot, and showing the time to the great man's family and household by means of a single hand working its way round a 12-hour circuit on the clock's face. But before the middle of the 15th century a development of great significance occurs, in the form of a spring-driven mechanism.
 



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The earliest surviving spring-driven clock, now in the Science Museum in London, dates from about 1450. By that time clockmakers have not only discovered how to transmit power to the mechanism from a coiled spring. They have also devised a simple but effective solution to the problem inherent in a coiled spring which steadily loses power as it uncoils.

The solution to this is the fusee.
 

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The fusee is a cone, bearing a spiral of grooves on its surface, which forms part of the axle driving the wheels of the clock mechanism. The length of gut linking the drum of the spring to the axle is wound round the fusee. It lies on the thinnest part of the cone when the spring is fully wound and reaches its broadest circumference by the time the spring is weak. Increased leverage exactly counteracts decreasing strength.

These two devices, eliminating the need for weights, make possible clocks which stand on tables, clocks which can be taken from room to room, even clocks to accompany a traveller in a carriage. Eventually, most significant of all, they make possible the pocket watch.
 

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