A Very Short History Of The Pendulum Clock Part 1

I have been interested in clocks of all kinds for many years now, and I used to marvel at the complexity and beauty of a good grandfather clock.

I realised early on in my interest that the clock as we know it today could not have just appeared out of nowhere fully formed, so I started to do a little research into the subject.

The story of the development of the clock, and in particular the pendulum which swings and controls the clock, is almost an epic tale in itself, with lots of brilliant minds, some real characters and a few charlatans thrown in for good measure - - - - come with me, as we go back almost a thousand years to it's beginning, and work our way forward again to the mechanical clock that we would recognise today.

A single person, or even a single country did not invent the clock. The first people to need to know and measure time were astronomers, they realised very quickly that the observation of planets and stars requires accurate time keeping.

Way back in 1100 A.D. a Chinese astronomer called Su Sung made a huge clock thirty six feet high, which incorporated astronomical models showing star positions. Processions of figures carried tablets showing the time to anyone stood looking at the clock, (and I'll bet there were plenty of those) and inside the clock itself were the astronomical models, hidden from the ordinary people. The clock was driven by a massive water wheel, and the most important part of the whole thing was a device to control the water flow rate, and thus the clocks timekeeping.

The control device is known as an escapement, and this clock was the earliest known example, although apparently a monk called I'Sing invented the escapement itself centuries earlier. (No jokes about I Sing and Su Sung please, the names are held to be correct so I won't make a Song and dance about it!)

The escapement is the heart of a clock, it lets the power in the weights or springs "escape" in tiny equal amounts, so the hands move round the dial in a steady measured progress.

Moving on a few hundred years, the astronomers in Europe continued to commission working models, Ptolemy and Copernicus were just two of many people investigating the heavens. From around 1400 onwards, non-astronomers started to take an interest in the new mechanical wonders, and the timekeeping part of the machines was split off from the models of the planets movements, and the "clock" was born.

There is a theory, which sounds reasonable to me that the word clock comes from the German word "Glock" which means bell. The early clocks were mostly in towers in public buildings, and did not have any hands; they just rang the hour on a bell.

Apart from tower clocks, around Cromwell's time the usual clock to be found in the houses of very wealthy men was the Lantern Clock, so called because it resembled an old coaching lantern, except for the large bell on top. Cromwell himself owned several clocks, and there is a watch he owned in the British Museum.

These clocks had what is called a "Verge" escapement, combined with a swinging bar called the "Foliot", without going into detail here I can tell you that they were not very good timekeepers - - - - people used to go out to the sundial in their garden to set the clock somewhere near!

This foliot was replaced later by a balance wheel, but the timekeeping was still, shall we say, not very accurate. The search for accuracy in timekeeping was still driven by the astronomers, for better clocks meant better planetary observations. The average person going about their daily life at this time had no need of a clock at all; he or she knew by the Sun's position in the sky roughly what time it was, and for centuries that was good enough for work on the farm and village life.

One astronomer who played a crucial part in the development of the grandfather clock was Galileo Galiei, the famous Italian scientist and astronomer. When Galileo was a young man the story goes that he was in the cathedral in Pisa, and noticed that one of the lamps hung from the roof was swinging in the breeze from the open door. He timed this swing as best as he could using his pulse, and noticed that it took the same number of beats to swing through a short arc as it did through a much longer one. It moved slowly swinging through a short arc and faster when swinging through a long one, so the time it took was always exactly the same regardless of the size of the swing. Another fact he later discovered was that the number of swings a pendulum makes in a minute depends only on its length.

This was in 1581, and after that many mechanics and blacksmiths were to try their hand at making a clock with a pendulum. Then in 1657 a clockmaker in Holland, Salomon Coster, made the first pendulum clock from a design by the great Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens. This clock still exists today, and is in a museum in Leiden, Holland. It has a pendulum 14cm long, and a verge and crown-wheel escapement.

Huygens published a book in 1658 all about the pendulum clock, and he was recognised as the inventor of the pendulum thanks to his book. Although later research indicates that Galileo's pupil Viviani actually built a clock to Galileo's design and instruction, but because they were so secretive about it at the time they did not receive any credit for the invention, and it was only by accident around 80 years later that knowledge of this clock, built around 1640, came to light - - - by then Huygens was firmly accepted by everyone as the inventor of the pendulum clock, Galileo received no credit for it till many years after his death, and probably never at all but for the chance discovery of all his old manuscripts in a butchers shop being used as wrapping paper for meat! - - - But that's a story for another time - - -

Huygens also contributed two more inventions to the clock movement. The crutch that drives the pendulum, and "Huygens endless rope" which enabled the weight to still drive the clock while it was being wound up.

The new knowledge spread to England very quickly, this was to make us the leading clock making country in the world for the next 150 years or so, due to the rapid take-up of the new pendulum. We will leave the story here, the development of the clock movement has moved from China via Turkey to Italy, then to Holland, and we can take a look at the next stage here in England in part two.

Andrew.

http://www.clockmakersandrepairs.co.uk

The Liberator Written By Alex Kershaw

I have always been interested in WWII books that tell the true story of so many of our military exploits from that war. I think this book by Alex Kershaw is told better than any book I have read on the subject. He knows how to write about his subject by using words and phrases that make the reader thoroughly understand what they are reading and finds the story getting better as it goes. The European zone in which our gallant military fought contains so much information told in a great way. Felix Sparks was born and raised in Miami, Arizona, an area that suffered the ravages of the great depression as much as the rest of the nation. Felix hunted, ran traps, and got food any way he could. When he wasn't hunting he was studying. His military training started in the Citizens Military Training Program where he learned how to march and drill in very high heat environment. He wanted to go to college and he loved the military-anything that was military. He ventured away from the area and found himself being asked by an army recruiter if he wanted to join the army. He figured "why not" and joined, a decision that forged his life forever.

Felix Sparks, now married with a baby, prepared to shove off on a troop transport that ended up in Europe prepared as well as possible for fighting a war. While on the ship General George Patton announced that from that point and time they would be a part of the 7th United States Army and they were going ashore to attack Sicily, Italy in small troop transport boats. None of the men knew what they were in for. Sparks was a part of the National Guard Thunderbirds, all green recruits. The book describes several of the generals associated with army leading and planning duties, Patton, Marshall, Eisenhower, Mark Clark, and others and how they made their battle plans, some with and some without arguments. Sparks at this time had no idea he would move up in the ranks to eventually become a general too, and that was far from his mind at this time. He just wanted to defeat the Germans and Italians. The many battles he and his group fought were tough and brutal while killing and wounding many men. Their drives would advance one day and lose ground the next. The Germans were tough while the Italians were not since they were not sure if they were staying in this war or not. The Thunderbirds along with the rest of their groups moved up the boot of Italy towards Rome. The Germans fought back for every inch of ground in Italy with both sides killing and wounding thousands of men along the way. New raw recruits kept coming up the pipeline adjusting to war as they had never imagined it to be.

The description of the battles is beyond imagination. The men would dig a small foxhole if none was available, they would jump into any hole large enough to cover as much of them as possible. The sounds of shells coming from both the enemy and their own units as they sailed over their heads or landed very close to them was such a caustic and nerve wracking and body shaking experience. To have a man sharing a foxhole one minute and killed the next is incomprehensible to those that were never in battle. Sometimes friendly fire fell short of its mark and hit our own men. When they tried to advance, they had to carry such huge heavy packs on their backs containing survival gear as well as ammunition, grenades, shovels, military packed food including good old Spam that was a real war ration. When the chance came to take a break, they would move away to a nearby town and relax as much as possible with wine, women, and song. They danced, they had sex even though they were all pre-warned about the disease that was so prevalent in the entire area due to the women being both lonely with most of their men at war, and the demands the German soldiers made of the women.

Sometimes the men would find some great caches of wine and they really enjoyed that. But the many grievous losses of men from so many battles were so enormous that it was hard to wrap their minds around that and keep going. Blood flowing from wounded and/or killed men on both sides were everywhere. Some of the rivers and canals flowed red. As the men went through towns that they were taking back from the Germans, the citizens went wild with chants of thanks and food and drink coming out of the cellars and caves. All through this time, Sparks led his troops while taking battlefield rank promotions. His men loved him because he cared about them and would be there with them as much as possible. As they progressed through Italy and into France and Germany, they came to one of the concentration camps, Dachau, where they found the most disturbing sights they had seen during the entire war. The description of bodies just thrown on top of other bodies, the ovens that still had some in them that had been burned, the piles of clothes that the prisoners had to dispose of, and so much more that makes the reader gets chills. One of the last battles of this group was the march to Hitler's own compound but by the time they had gotten there Hitler had committed suicide.

I know this review is long but to write telling less doesn't give the reader a real idea of what all is contained in this super book. You must read it. You will get an idea of what the foot soldier went through during WWII. How the ones that survived made it through mentally is beyond my imagination. Praise to these men for their help in giving us the freedoms we take for granted. Believe me, they are not free-freedoms.