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Entered according to Act of Congress, in June, 1869, by J. W. Burkk A Cos., in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the So. District of Georgia.
Vol. 111-—No. 36.
MAKING- WATCHES BY MACHINERY.
"IHP
o’clock is it?” asked
Emanuel Swedenborg, upon
bis death-bed. On being told,
he answered : “It is well; I thank you ;
may God bless you and the spirit of
the venerable teacher gently passed
away.
“What o’clock is it?” ask little chil
dren, as they blow off the feathered seed
vessels of the dandelion, and tell the
hour by the number that remain upon
the stalk.
Civilized man, everywhere, from the
cradle to the grave, repeats this ques
tion oftener than an}' other. Were all
things at rest it could never be answer
ed. Motion alone enables us to meas
ure time. Motion i3 best exemplified
in the heavenly bodies, particularly the
sun. Yet man, “the tool-making ani
mal,” never asks, “What o’sun?’ but
simply, “What o’clock? ’ He has
brought artificial time-keepers to such
perfection that they are the most won
derful of his mechanical achievements,
the things most alive and human in the
entire range of his handiwork.
Primitive man had little need of clocks
or watches. The opening and closing
of flowers; the voices of birds, beasts,
and insects ; the positions of sun, moon
and stars, told the passage of time with
accuracy enough for his simple life.
Mariners, hunters, shepherds, and all
other men much alone with nature, still
keep familiar with her habits and her
moods. The Indian says, “Four moons
have passed,” or “It was ten sleeps
ago,” and the farmer, “It was between
day and sunrise,” or “It was half an
hour by sun.”
Job’s expression, “ Asa servant ear
nestly desireth the shadow,” points to
the earliest artificial time-keeper. Ihe
sun-dial ( dialis , daily) originated, no
body knows when, with some of the
Eastern nations. Isaiah wrote, eight
hundred years before Christ, “ I will
bring back the shadow of the degrees
which is gone down in the sun-dial of
Aliaz ten degrees backward.”
MACON, GEORGIA, MARCH 5, 1870.
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SUN-DIAL IX AN ENGLISH CHURCH-YARD.
PJBj®
A dial, usually standing upon a stone
post on a sunny knoll, is still preserv.
ed as a relic of the past in almost every
English country church yard. Around
it on Sunday mornings, an hour or two
before service, were wont to gather the
rustics, discussing crops, the weather,
and politics, while matrons gossiped
soberly, and children tumbled in leap
frog over mossy tombstones, or played
ball against the tower, till the parson’s
tinkling bell summoned all to worship.
In clear weather the dial showed the
hour by day, as the stars did by night;
but when clouds came something more
was needed. Hence the East originated
ted the “Clepsydra,” (the “ Water-
Stealer,”) a transparent, graduated vase
filled with liquid, which slowly trickled
or stole away through a little aoer
ture in the bottom. The receding
height marked the passage of the
hours. The Clepsydra was used
in ancient China, and in Egypt un
der the Ptolemies. Caesar found
it among the native Britons. Pompey
introduced it into Roman courts “to
prevent babbling.”
The hour-glass is only a modification
of the clepsydra. It substitutes fine
sand for water, as something which will
neither freeze nor evaporate, and which,
when the glass is full, will run little
faster than when it is nearly empty. It
was known before the Christian era, and
has been used by nearly all nations.
It was so common among our ancestors
a hundred years ago that the illustration
which we copy from the New England
Primer of 1777 was drawn from one of
the most familiar objects in their daily
life.
In dry, equable Eastern climates, the
clepsydra long maintained its suprema-
Whole No. 140.
cy, and it is used in India even
to this day. It was exceeding
ly inaccurate, but improve
ments were constantly added.
Sometimes water flowed in
tears from the eyes of auto
mata, and sometimes a floating
statue rising and falling with
the liquid pointed to the pass
ing hours engraved upon an
upright scale. Next, a little
wheel was introduced, on which
the water fell drop by drop,
turning it, and thus communi
cating motion to hands upon a
dial. In time, machinery was
inserted to tell not only the
hours of the day, but the age
of the moon, and the motions
of other heavenly bodies ; and
finally the clepsydra grew into
an ingenious and complicated
water-clock.
A thousand years ago a Per
sian caliph, the Haroun-al-
Raschid of the Arabian Nights,
sent one to Emperor Charle
magne which had a striking
apparatus. When the twelve hours
were completed twelve doors opened in
its face, and from each rode an automa
ton horseman, who waited till the stri
king was over, and then rode back again,
closing the door after him.
“Clock” originally signified “bell,”
and the French cloche still retains that
meaning. The invention is claimed for
many different peoples and eras, from
the Chinese, two thousand years before
Christ, down to the Germans of eight
centuries ago. The first general use of
clocks was in monasteries, during the
eleventh century.
Before their appearance the sacristan
sat up to watch the stars that he might
waken the monks at the hours of pray
er. The common people attributed
their origin to the evil one, and had any
body outside of the religious orders in
curred the odium of first introducing
them, he would doubtless have been put
to death as a sorcerer.
For several hundred years they were