History of Clocks

For the earliest humans, time may have been related to the movement of the sun. Repetitive phenomena such as the sunrise and sunset could have led to a conception of time span. Eventually, primitive humans began to estimate the day's length. This period of light and darkness is known as the "natural day," or solar day. Obviously, the length of a solar day varies depending on the season. Early humans may have gained an appreciation for longer time intervals by watching the moon. A person keeping track of the waxing and waning moon would note that the seasons repeated themselves approximately every twelfth full moon. Such observations may eventually have led to delineations of the following time intervals: e.g., the solar day, the lunar month, and either the solar or astronomical year.

Two of the earliest civilizations to emerge included the Babylonians and the Egyptians. These cultures' religion was oriented towards sun worsh

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st notable achievement of the oriental horologists though, was a great astronomical clocktower described by Su Sung. Born in 1020 A.D., Su Sung completed his book in 1090 A.D. In it, he describes a 30 to 40-foot high clock topped by a huge bronze rotating "armillary sphere and celestial globe, together with numerous jackwork figures with both audible and visible effects." From a chamber within the armillary sphere, the automatically rotated celestial globe could be compared with the observed positions of the planets and stars. These various devices were all driven by waterwheel with a complex system of gearing. The waterwheel was 11 feet in diameter and carried 36 scoops on its perimeter. Water in an upper reservoir was delivered to a constant-level tank by a siphon. From there, it was discharged onto the waterwheel's 0.2 cubic foot capacity scoops. The waterwheel also had a very advanced escapement system. This consisted of "two steelyards upon which each of the scoops acted in turn. When the scoop was full, its weight overcame the balancing system, and it fell freely for a given distance until checked, without recoil by a locking device." Essentially, some sort of weigh-bridge prevented the fall of a scoop until
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Approximate Word count = 3334
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)

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