56LEARNINGLEAR
How the mechanical clock
brought a new awareness of time
Gil Baillod
The hourglass emerged at the same time as mechanical
timekeeping in the 13th century. This portable sand-timer
has nothing to do with the water clock even though they
both replicate the flow of time, nor does it contain sand,
but marble powder tinted with wine.
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People in 14th-century Europe didn’t read the time;
they listened to it. The advent of the mechanical
clock towards the end of the previous century represented a major landmark, the true significance of
which emerged as the clock developed over
the centuries.
The 14th and 15th centuries witnessed a succession of convergent discoveries: the division of the
day into 24 equal hours, the use of gunpowder on
the battlefields, the compass, movable-type printing, the hourglass, ocean-going navigation…
The mechanical and regular measurement of time
played a key role in these events, by forging a
whole new vision of life and of social organisation.
The division of time into 24 equal hours represented
the first scale of time with a truly universal vocation.
But this new awareness of time emerged when
human souls were deeply troubled by a series of
disasters : famines, wars and above all the Black
Death which wiped out a third of the European population, and up to half that of many cities.
The mechanical clock was not created ex nihilo
(see WA009). It had been the object of empirical
research during the last quarter of the 13th century,
as clockmakers sought a way of ringing church
bells automatically. The age-old clepsydra or waterclock technology, which had hitherto served this
function, had reached the limits of its development
capacity. Instead of adding bells to clocks, the
device involved mechanising the bells that rang out
the times of the seven daily prayers. The mechanism could well be at the origin of horological movements : its gear train with a hammer fixed to the
oscillating verge is believed to have served as a
model for the wheel train of timepieces. This
mechanical alarm was a small dial-less instrument
that soon grew to a volume of a cubic metre in public clocks. One and a half centuries later, a mechanical timepiece easily fitted into the palm of a hand –
a prodigious feat indeed!
RNINGLEARNINGLE
The development of movable metal type, attributed to
Gutenberg, dates from the mid-15th century. It spread
quickly at the same time as engraved metal plates for printing illustrations appeared in the Rhine Valley and northern
Italy. Clock constructors could now benefit from drawings
and precise blueprints to illustrate technical texts.
Astronomy and superstition. Astronomical horology,
a scientific discipline extending beyond timekeeping,
was to experience equally prodigious development. In
1330, Robert Wallingford built an extremely complicated astronomical mechanism in St. Albans, England.
Completed in 1364, it was notably distinguished by a
“wheel of fortune” subdial, reflecting the strength of
superstition in that era. The even more sophisticated
astronomical clock produced by Italian physician and
clockmaker Giovanni da Dondi in 1364, is referred to
as Dondi’s Astrarium. Several copies have been
made, thanks to the abundant documentation left by its
creator. These two mechanically advanced models –
Wallingford’s in iron and Dondi’s in brass – remained
unequalled for more than a century and a half.
In the 14th century, horological technologies began to
spread at an increasingly rapid pace. Europe’s 742
Cistercian monasteries doubtless played a role in the
fast-growing numbers of clocks installed in church towers. The Cistercians gave decisive impetus to the renaissance of iron and steel metallurgy in that century.
Public clocks became indicators of modern urbanisation. All the large towns had their own, despite their
high cost and the months or even years that it took to
build them. Such clocks were chiming models, many
equipped with automatons or jacks – hence the need
for a driving force stronger than the hydraulic power
used by water clocks. The clocks rang the hours by the
corresponding number of strikes: one at 1 o’clock, two
at 2 o’clock, and so on until 24 strokes at midnight.
That amounted to 300 strikes a day, requiring several
rewindings of the striking mechanism driving-weight
and thus resulting in substantial wear of the mechanism – which explains the fairly rapid shift towards
chiming two sets of 12 hours in 78 strikes, making a
total of only 156.
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LEARNINGLEARNI
This small grinding wheel is the ancestor of watchmaking
machine tools. The first iron clocks were made at the
blacksmith’s forge, while the anvil could be found in miniature on watchmakers’ benches from the 17th century.
Fresh corpses. Meanwhile, cannon fire began to
resound over Europe’s battlefields, notably at Crécy
in 1346, adding another means of destruction to this
fabulous and yet calamitous century. In the early 14th
century, and particularly in 1315 and 1316, the whole
of Europe suffered disastrous weather that led to an
economic depression lasting until the Renaissance
150 years later. Famine was chronic and widespread; in Ireland, parents fed on their children and
the gallows only served to whet appetites. But the
worst was yet to come. In 1347, as ever more elaborate clocks were beginning to appear, the Black
Death struck the under-nourished populations of
Europe. This “curse”, which was widely blamed on
the Jews, reappeared frequently into the 17th century and the Great Plague of London in 1655.
These successive scourges had dire consequences
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on all fields of activity and across all social classes.
Death tolls ranged from a third to two-fifths of the
population. In some areas half the people died.
This led to the desertion of countless villages and
migration to the towns… where clocks governed
day-to-day activities. Hourly pay replaced the
somewhat random daily wage. The lack of manpower resulted in important demands by agricultural workers, including the adoption of the equal
hours given by clocks instead of the variable seasonal hours – a major revolution in itself.
While the 14th century might be regarded as the
century of clocks, it was also that of the spread of
universities, the first of which were founded in the
previous century under the iron rule of the Church.
They gradually and discreetly freed themselves
from this subservience.
INGLEARNINGLEA
Improved steel. Twenty-four equal hours in a day,
counted off in half-hours after sunset, supplanted the
Church’s canonical hours, and did much to foster the
secularisation of urban life characterised by the rise of
the middle classes from the ashes of feudal rule.
Having emerged from the forge (probably under
the impetus of the Cistercians), horology gradually
began producing increasingly sophisticated instruments thanks to better tools. The metallurgy industry developed an improved steel that would enable
an invention of crucial importance to horology: the
coiled mainspring. It released clocks from walls to
which they were confined by the need for a drivingweight, and accelerated the miniaturisation
process from wall clocks to table clocks from the
mid-15th century, and on to pocket-watches in the
following century. One historical account indicates
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LEARNINGLEARNI
that the Duke of Milan and his courtiers wore
watches attached to their clothing as early as 1480.
In war-torn 15th-century Europe, weaponry was
miniaturised in parallel with horology and in a manner that often implied some exchange of ideas.
Firearms shrank from bombards to pistols, and
clocks adopted Indo-Arabic numerals. In the mid15th century, the goldsmith and diamond-cutter,
Gutenberg, revolutionised printing by creating movable-type copper printing blocks, which, unlike the
existing wooden blocks, could be used repeatedly.
People were at last able to read the Bible for themselves, an opportunity that would in turn accelerate
another revolution, that of Reformation under Luther.
Transportation was modernised by the introduction
of the mobile front cart-axle, while ships and sails
were evolved that would take Europeans around the
Cape of Africa and into the Indian Ocean.
While the early trans-oceanic explorers certainly did
not set off without careful study and preparation, neither did the horologists progress blindfold. From the
mid-15th century, blacksmiths and locksmiths tried to
form guilds in order to obtain exclusive rights to the
production of clocks. Goldsmiths sought to maintain
their prerogatives in the field of miniaturised movements and the trade in precious metals. It is worth
noting that, amid the endemic disasters of that
period, fluctuations in the exchange rates of gold and
silver influenced the economies of the European and
Islamic world from around 1000 to 1500. Money
changers made fortunes by speculating on currency
movements between East and West.
This wide variety of factors and circumstances now
converged towards opening up boundless horizons
for horology. The industry was to be essentially
driven by Protestants and initially blossomed
in the Northern European lands of Germany, the
Netherlands and England.
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