The Development Of Old Clocks
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009Time piece inventors throughout recorded history have had one common objective.They have all tried to accurately measure time so that people could use it better. They have constructed a number of time measurement mechanisms.. Among them are sundials, stone structures like Stonehenge, pocket watches, and various clocks.
The star sirius appears near the sun every 365 days. The ancient Egyptians developed a calendar knowing this in the year 4236 BC. Old clocks, many made of sticks, were based on this calendar and lunar and tidal acitivity and were operated manually by moving the stick to align with the sun. Other indicators to help gauge the annual time included the flooding of the nile river.
During their brief popularity sundials told time based on the rotation of the Earth, but cloudy days and periods of darkness made them useless. Many primitive timepieces relied on the shifting of the sun to tell time and had to be modified seasonally to be better understood.
Old Alarm Clocks Came Preset
The first mechanical alarm clock was developed in 1787 in New Hampshire but had one major glitch. The bell on the alarm could only go off at four in the morning. It was not until 1876 that old clocks with an adjustable alarm were developed. The patent was held by Seth Thomas and is the basic for many mechanical alarms used today.
Before 1912 there were only two possible operating systems for old clocks. They either utilized a pendulum’s mechanical action or they kept time by winding a main spring. In 1912 the Warren Clock Company began to produce battery operated clocks. The first wrist watch was invented in the early 17th century when a French mathematician attached a string to a pocket watch. Wrist watches are now the most popular timepieces in the world.
The weights used in many old clocks made them difficult to move around. Grandfather style clocks were used frequently, and then a smaller version was created that could fit on top of a table. Throughout time, various sizes and shapes of clocks have been made to satisfy people’s interest in time.