Saturday, April 12, 2014

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The modern clock - another Medieval Invention

Complex math and engineering

by Ferdinand III



Clocks. They keep time, rhythm, and routine. They allow for planning, scheduling and productivity improvements. Without clocks the ghosts of time disappear, moments are lost in the ether, work, life and even money evaporate.


The first mechanical clocks were created in Medieval Europe. This shows a society with a high mathematical and mechanical ability. I doubt many Atheists today would be clever-enough to invent, given their lack of a world-view, the idea of time-keeping, let alone the functional brilliance, of a mechanical clock. In 966 A.D. a Catholic monk named Gerbert, who later became Pope Sylvester II, invented a mechanism which rang bells at regular intervals throughout the day to call his fellow monks to prayer. This was the basis for the mechanical clock as the concept was elaborated upon and improved, for 300 years.



Enormously complex clocks which dominated the local architecture, were constructed by Catholics Richard of Wallingford in St Albans England by 1336, and by Giovanni Dondi in Padua from 1348 to 1364. Sadly these creations no longer remain extant. Detailed descriptions do remain however, of their design and construction, and some modern reproductions have been made. They illustrate how quickly the theory of the mechanical clock had been translated into practical constructions, and also that one of the many impulses to their development had been the desire of astronomers to investigate celestial phenomena and to find out the truth of God's creation.



[Wallingford's clock, a replica]



Wallingford's clock had a large astrolabe-type dial, showing the sun, the moon's age, phase, and node, a star map, and the planets. In addition, it had a wheel of fortune and an indicator of the state of the tide at London Bridge. Bells rang every hour, the number of strokes indicating the time. Wallingford's clock would be the basis of every single clock made during the Medieval period. In fact villages, towns, cities, abbey's competed with each other to build bigger and higher clocks which would dominate their landscape's and neighbour's. [see here for more information]



In Italy Dondi's clock was a seven-sided construction, 1 meter high, with dials showing the time of day, including minutes, the motions of all the known planets, an automatic calendar of fixed and movable feasts, and an eclipse prediction hand rotating once every 18 years. [source]



In the 17th century the pendulum-driven clock was invented. Huygens in Holland invented a clock using a mathematical formula that related pendulum length to time (99.38 centimeters or 39.13 inches for the one second movement). Shortly after this invention in 1670, an English clockmaker William Clement created a method to ensure greater accuracy to the keeping of precise time. After Clement, within a space of about 30 years, minute hands and second hands were added. [link]



The obvious feature of the medieval clock is the complexity of mathematics, and mechanical engineering including the concepts of gearing. A 'Dark Age' could not produce such detailed perfection.