PRIMITIVE TIME-PIECES by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 17, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 23.

PRIMITIVE TIME-PIECES.

By Editor

THE story is that King Alfred had no better way to tell the time than by burning twelve candles, each of which lasted two hours; and when all the twelve were gone, another day had passed. Long before the time of Alfred, and long before the time of Christ, the shadow of the sun told the hour of the day by means of a sun-dial. The old Chaldeans so placed a hollow hemisphere with a bead in the center that the shadow of the bead on the inner surface told the hour of the day. Other kinds of dials were afterward made with a tablet of wood or straight piece of metal. On the tablets were marked the different hours. When the shadow came to the mark "ix," it was nine o'clock in the morning. The dial was sometimes placed near the ground or on towers of buildings.

But the dial could only be used in the daytime, and even then it was worthless when the sun was covered with clouds. In order to measure the hours of the night as well as the hours of the day, the Greeks and Romans used the clepsydra, which means, "The water steals away." A large jar was filled with water, and a hole was made in the bottom through which the water could run. The glass in those days was not transparent. No one could see from the outside how much had escaped. So there were made on the inside certain marks that told the hours as the water ran out, or else a stick with notches in the edge was dipped into the water, and the depth of what was left showed the hour. Sometimes the water dropped into another jar in which a block of wood was floating, the block rising as the hours went on. Once in a while some very rich man had a clepsydra that sounded a musical note at every hour.

Another way of measuring time among the ancients was by the sand or hour-glass. This was made of pear-shaped bits of hollow glass, with a very small opening between them. It held just sand enough to run from the upper into the lower pear in the space of one hour. The glass was then turned the other side up and the sand ran back, also taking an hour. You have seen glasses of this kind where the sand runs out in three minutes; they are used in boiling eggs. King Charlemagne, a thousand years ago, had a glass of this kind that ran for twelve hours without turning. It was marked on the outside with red lines to show the escape of the sand.—Ed.