Part 4

The hour or sand-glass is liable to the objection, that it requires a horary attendant, as is intimated in the glee:

Five times by the taper’s light The hour-glass we have turned to-night.

But the Hour-glass is a better measurer of time than is generally imagined. The flow of the sand from one bulb to another is perfectly equable, whatever may be the quantity of sand above the aperture. The stream flows no faster when the upper bulb is almost full than when it is almost empty; the lower heap not being influenced by the pressure of the heap above.[11] Bloomfield, in one of his rural tales, “The Widow to her Hour-glass,” sings:

I’ve often watched thy streaming sand, And seen the growing mountain rise, And often found life’s hope to stand On props as weak in wisdom’s eyes: Its conic crown Still sliding down, Again heaped up, then down again: The sand above more hollow grew, Like days and years still filtering through, And mingling joy and pain.

Ford, contemporary with Massinger, has this impressive picture of the primitive time-keeper:

Minutes are number’d by the fall of sands, As, by an hour-glass, the span of time Doth waste us to our graves; and we look on it. An age of pleasures, revell’d out, comes home At last, and ends in sorrow: but the life, Weary of riot, numbers every sand, Wailing in sighs, until the last drop down; So to conclude calamity in rest: numbering wasted life.

How cleverly the old dramatist, Shirley, illustrates this philosopher in glass:

Let princes gather My dust into a glass, and learn to spend Their hour of state, that’s all they have; for when That’s out, Time never turns the glass again.

The Hour-glass has almost entirely given place to the more useful, because to a greater extent self-acting, instrument; and it is now seldom seen except upon the table of the lecturer or private teacher, in the study of the philosopher, in the cottage of the peasant, or in the hand of the old emblematic figure of Time.[12] We still sometimes see it in the workshop of the cork-cutter. The half-minute glass is still employed on board ship; and the two and a half or three minute glass for boiling an egg with exactness.

Preaching by the Hour-glass was formerly common; and public speakers are _timed_, in the present day, by the same means. In the church-wardens’ books of St. Helen’s, Abingdon, date 1599, is a charge of fourpence for an hour-glass for the pulpit; in 1564, we find in the books of St. Katherine’s, Christ Church, Aldgate, “paid for an hour-glass that hangeth by the pulpit when the preacher doth make a sermon, that he may know how the hour passeth away—one shilling;” and in the books of St. Mary’s, Lambeth, 1579 and 1615, are similar entries. Butler, in _Hudibras_, alludes to pulpit hour-glasses having been used by the Puritans: the preacher having named the text, turned up the glass; and if the sermon did not last till the sand was out, it was said by the congregation that the preacher was lazy; but if, on the other hand, he continued much longer, they would yawn and stretch till the discourse was finished. At the old church of St. Dunstan-in-the-West, Fleet-street, was a large hour-glass in a silver frame, of which latter, when the instrument was taken down, in 1723, two heads were made for the parish staves. Hogarth, in his “Sleepy Congregation,” has introduced an hour-glass on the west side of the pulpit. A very perfect hour-glass is preserved in the church of St. Alban, Wood-street, Cheapside; it is placed on the right of the reading-desk within a frame of twisted columns and arches, supported on a spiral column: the four sides have angels sounding trumpets; and each end has a line of crosses _patées_ and fleurs-de-lis, somewhat resembling the imperial crown.

Footnote 11:

Le Jeune has painted two children watching with wonder the sand flowing in the hour-glass.

Footnote 12:

The Hour-glass is the sign of Calvert’s Brewery, in Upper Thames-street.

CLOCKS AND WATCHES.

The clock was also the horologe of our old poets, from the Latin _horologium:_

He’ll watch the horologe a double set, If drink rock not his cradle.—_Othello_, act ii. sc. 3.

Drayton calls the cock the country horologe.

Rabelais thus capriciously ridicules the use of the clock: “The greatest loss of time that I know, is to count the hours. What good comes of it? Nor can there be any greater dotage in the world, than for one to guide and direct his course by the sound of a bell, and not by his own judgment and discretion.” In similar exuberance has this gay satirist said: “There is only one quarter of an hour in human life passed ill, and that is between the calling for the reckoning and paying it.”

With more serious purpose has Sir Walter Scott, in his “Lay of the Imprisoned Huntsman,” thus anathematised the clock and the dial:

I hate to learn the ebb of time From yon dull steeple’s drowsy chime, Or mark it as the sunbeams crawl Inch after inch along the wall.

Richard II., in the dungeon of Pomfret Castle, soliloquises more solemnly:

Now hath Time made me his numb’ring clock: My thoughts are minutes, and with sighs they jade Their watches on to mine eyes, the outward watch Whereto my finger, like a dial’s point, Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears. Now, sir, the sound that tells what hour it is, Are clamorous groans, that strike upon my heart, Which is the bell: so sighs, and tears, and groans Show minutes, times, and hours.

Lucian, who died A.D. 180, refers to an instrument, mechanically constructed with water, which reported the hours by a bell. “Before the time of Jerome” (born A.D. 332), says Browne, “there were horologies that measured the hours, not only by drops of water in glasses, called _clepsydra_, but also by sand in glasses, called _clepsummia_.” It was the clepsydra to which Lucian alludes. When the water, which was constantly dripping out of the vessel, reached a certain level, it drew away, by means of a rope connected with the piston in the water-vessel, the ledge on which a weight rested; and the falling of this weight, which was attached to a bell, caused it to strike. This, perhaps, was the earliest kind of striking clock.

A public striking clock may well be termed the regulator of society: it reminds us of our engagements, and announces the hours for exertion or repose; and in the silence of night it tells us of the hours that are past, and how many remain before day.

The earliest public clock set up in England was that with three bells, which was placed in the clochard or bell-tower of the Palace at Westminster, built by Edward III. in 1365-6: the palace was then the most frequent residence of the king and his family; and the three bells were “usually rung at Coronations, Triumphs, Funeralls of Princes, and their Obits.”[13] This bell-tower stood very near to the site of the great clock-tower of the new palace; the gilding of the exterior of which cost no less than 1500_l._

A public clock is a public monitor; and the dimensions of its dial, and works, and striking-bell add much to the solemnity of its proclaiming the march of time. The great clocks in the International Exhibition of 1862 were among its colossal marvels.

The clocks of St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Palace, and the Royal Exchange, are three of the largest clocks in London. The St. Paul’s hour-hands are the height of a tall man; the hour struck by this clock has been heard at midnight on the terrace of Windsor Castle; and from the telegraph station on Putney-heath the hour has been read by the St. Paul’s clock-face without the aid of a telescope: the hour-numerals are 2 feet 2½ inches in height. This clock once struck thirteen, which being heard by a sentinel, accused of being asleep at his post at that hour, was the means of saving his life; this striking thirteen was caused by the lifting-piece holding on too long.

The former church of St. Paul, Covent Garden, built by Inigo Jones, contained within the pediment a pendulum-clock, made by Richard Harris in 1641, and stated by an inscription in the vestry to be the first pendulum-clock made.[14]

The Horse Guards Clock is properly described by Mr. Denison as “a superstitiously venerated and bad clock;” it is minutely described by Mr. B. L. Vulliamy in the _Curiosities of London_, pp. 378-380.

St. James’s Palace Clock, made by Clay, clockmaker to George II., strikes the hours and quarters upon three bells; it requires to be wound up every day, and originally had but one hand. We were told by the late Mr. B. L. Vulliamy, that when the gatehouse was repaired in 1831, the clock was removed, and not put up again, on account of the roof being reported unsafe to carry the weight. The inhabitants of the neighbourhood then memorialised William IV. for the replacement of the timekeeper: the King, having ascertained its weight, shrewdly inquired how, if the tower-roof was not strong enough to carry the clock, it was safe for the number of persons occasionally seen upon it to witness processions, &c. The clock was forthwith replaced, and a minute-hand was added, with new dials: the original dials were of wainscot, in a great number of very small pieces curiously dovetailed together.

Trinity College, Cambridge, has a double-striking clock, put up by the famous Dr. Bentley; striking, as it used to be said, once for Trinity and once for his former college, St. John’s, which had no clock.

The clock of St. Clement’s Danes, in the Strand, strikes twice; the hour being first struck on a larger bell, and then repeated on a smaller one; so that if the first has been miscounted, the second may be more correctly observed.

Wren has introduced the gilt projecting dial in several of the City churches: that at St. Magnus, London Bridge, was the gift of Sir Charles Duncomb, who, it is related, when a poor boy, had once to wait upon London Bridge a considerable time for his master, whom he missed through not knowing the hour; he then vowed that if ever he became successful in the world, he would give to St. Magnus a public clock, that passengers might see the time; and this dial proves the fulfilment of his vow. It was originally ornamented with several richly gilded figures: upon a small metal shield inside the clock are engraven the donor’s arms, with this inscription: “The gift of Sir Charles Duncomb, Knight, Lord Major, and Alderman of this ward; Langley Bradley fecit, 1709.”

The former church of St. Dunstan-in-the-West, Fleet-street, within memory possessed one of London’s wonders: it had a large gilt dial overhanging the street, and above it two figures of savages, life-size, carved in wood, and standing beneath a pediment, each having in his right hand a club, with which he struck the quarters upon a suspended bell, moving his head at the same time. To see the men strike was considered very attractive; and opposite St. Dunstan’s was a famous field for pickpockets, who took advantage of the gaping crowd. So it had long been; for Ned Ward, in his _London Spy_, says: “We added to the number of fools, and stood a little, making our ears do penance to please our eyes, with the conceited notion of their (the puppets’) heads and hands, which moved to and fro with as much deliberate stiffness as the two wooden horologists at St. Dunstan’s when they strike the quarters.” Cowper thus describes them in his _Table-Talk:_

When labour and when dulness, club in hand, Like the two figures at St. Dunstan’s, stand, Beating alternately, in measur’d time, The clockwork tintinnabulum of rhyme, Exact and regular the sounds will be, But such mere quarter-strokes are not for me.

These figures and the clock were put up in 1671. Among those who were struck by their oddity was the third Marquis of Hertford, born in 1777: “When a child, and a good child, his nurse, to reward him, would take him to see _the giants_ at St. Dunstan’s; and he used to say that when he grew to be a man _he would buy those giants_” (Cunningham’s _Handbook of London_). Many a child of rich parents may have used the same words; but in the present case the Marquis kept his word. When the old church of St. Dunstan was taken down, in 1830, Lord Hertford attended the second auction-sale of the materials, and purchased the clock, bells, and figures for 200_l.;_ he had them placed at the entrance to the grounds of his villa in the Regent’s Park, thence called St. Dunstan’s Villa; and here the figures do duty to the present day.

These automata remind us of the Minute-Jacks in Shakspeare’s _Timon of Athens_, generally interpreted as Jacks of the Clock-house:

You fools of fortune, trencher friends, time’s flies, Cap and knee slaves, vapours, and minute-jacks.

Still, the Minute-Jacks only struck hours and quarters; and the term is rather thought to mean “fellows that watch their minutes to make their advantage, time-servers.” There is no doubt that by the “Jack that keeps the stroke,” in _Richard III._, is meant the Jack of the Clock-house.[15]

A much more noteworthy sight than the Fleet-street clock-figures is possessed by the Londoners of the present day in the Time-ball Signal upon the roof of the Electric Telegraph Office, No. 448 West Strand.

The signal consists of a zinc ball, 6 feet in diameter, supported by a rod, which passes down the centre of a column, and carries at the base a piston, which, in its descent, plunges into a cast-iron air-cylinder; the escape of the air being regulated so as at pleasure to check the momentum of the ball, and prevent concussion. The raising of the ball, half-mast high, takes place daily at 10 minutes to 1 o’clock; at 5 minutes to 1 it is raised to the full height; and at 1 precisely, and simultaneously with the fall of the Time-ball at Greenwich Observatory (by which navigators correct their chronometers), it is liberated by the galvanic current sent from the Observatory, through a wire laid for that purpose. The same galvanic current which liberates the Ball in the Strand moves a needle upon the transit-clock of the Observatory, the time occupied by the transition being about 1-3000th part of a second; and by the unloosing of the machinery which supports the ball, less than one-fifth part of a second. The true moment of one o’clock is therefore indicated by the first appearance of the line of light between the dark cross over the ball and the body of the ball itself. There is a similar Time-ball upon the roof of a clockmaker’s in Cornhill.

At Edinburgh, also, is a Time-ball connected with a Time-gun signal, consisting of a large iron cannon, in the Half-moon Battery, at the Castle; which cannon, having been duly loaded and primed some time between twelve and one o’clock, is fired off precisely at the latter hour by an electric influence from the corrected Mean-time of the Royal Observatory, at a distance of three-quarters of a mile; which, however, first passes to another clock close to the gun, and thus affords a short fraction of a second _before_ one o’clock for the train of processes; so that the actual final flash of the exploding gun in the Castle occurs absolutely coincidently with the tick of the sixtieth second of the corrected mean-time clock in the Royal Observatory. The whole is well described by Professor Piazzi Smith, Astronomer-Royal for Scotland, in _Good Words_, 1862, part iv.

We now return to the details of the great London Clocks. Mr. Dent undertook the construction of the Royal Exchange Clock in 1843: it was required to be superior to any public clock in England, and to satisfy certain conditions proposed for the first time by the Astronomer-Royal, and such as could not be satisfied by any clock of the common construction. Mr. Dent had then no factory of his own for making large clocks, and he could not get the clock made for him; “but with the energy and genius by which that remarkable man raised himself from a tallow-chandler’s apprentice to the position of the first horologist in the world, he set up a factory for himself at a great expense, and made the clock there; and of this, the first turret-clock he had ever made, the Astronomer-Royal certified, in 1845, that it not only satisfied his conditions, but that Mr. Dent had made some judicious improvements upon his suggestions, and that he had no doubt it was the best public clock in the world.”[16] It is true to a second of time, and has a compensation-pendulum.

The Westminster Palace Clock, designed by Mr. Denison, has four dials, each 22½ feet wide: they are not the largest in the world, being considerably less than the dial at Mechlin; but there is no other clock in the world which has to work four dials of such great width, especially a clock going 8½ days. St. Paul’s Clock has only two 17-feet dials, and is wound up every day, which makes a vast difference in the power and strength required. Each pair of hands weighs above 2 cwt.: they are made of gun-metal, instead of sheet-iron or copper. The hour-sockets are iron tubes, 5 inches in diameter; the dials are of cast-iron framework, filled with opal glass, and stand out 5 feet from the main walls.

The size of public dials is often very inadequate to their height, and the distance at which they are intended to be seen. They ought to be at least one foot in diameter for every ten feet of height above the ground, and in many cases more, whenever the dial will be seen far off. Now, the clock-dials of St. Pancras, Euston-square, are but 6½ feet in diameter, though at the height of 100 feet, and therefore are much too small.

The Clock, of silver-gilt, presented by Henry VIII. to Anne Boleyn on the morning of their marriage, is one of the earliest chamber-clocks in the kingdom: the case is richly chased and engraved, and on the weights are the initial letters of Henry and Anne, with true-lovers’ knots. This clock was purchased at the Strawberry Hill sale in the year 1842, for 110_l._, and is now in the collection of Queen Victoria.

We may here mention that the late Duke of Sussex possessed, at Kensington Palace, an invaluable collection of the early as well as the most perfect specimens of Time-keepers, among which was “Harrison’s first Clock, the forerunner of that invaluable machine, without which the compass itself would be but an imperfect guide to the mariner.”[17]

John Harrison received for his improved chronometers, in 1749, the Copley Medal; and, thus encouraged by the Royal Society, and by the hope of sharing the reward of 20,000_l._ offered by Parliament for the discovery of the longitude, Harrison produced in 1758 a time-keeper, which was sent for trial on a voyage to Jamaica. After 161 days, the error of the instrument was only one minute five seconds, and the maker received from the nation 5000_l._ For other chronometers, subjected, with perfect success, to a trial in a voyage to Barbadoes, Harrison received 10,000_l._ more. Dr. Stukeley writes of this ingenious man: “I passed by Mr. Harrison’s house at Barrow, that excellent genius of clock-making, who bids fair for the golden prize for the discovery of the longitude. I saw his famous clock last winter at Mr. George Graham’s: the sweetness of its motion, the contrivances to take off friction, to defeat the lengthening and shortening of the pendulum through heat and cold, and to prevent the disturbance of motion by that of the ship, cannot be sufficiently admired.”—_Ms. Journal._[18]

An exact measure of time is of the utmost importance to many of the sciences. Horology is indispensable to astronomy, in which the variation even of two or three seconds is of the greatest consequence. By means of a clock the Danish astronomer, Roemer, was enabled to discover that the eclipses of Jupiter’s satellites took place a few seconds later than he had calculated, when the earth was in that part of its orbit the farthest from Jupiter. Speculating on the cause of this phenomenon, he calculated that light was not propagated instantaneously, but took time to reach us; and, from calculations founded on this theory, light has been discovered to dart through space with a velocity of about 192,000 miles in a second: thus, the light of the sun takes eight minutes to reach the earth.

Horology has also enabled us to discover that when the wind passes one mile per hour, it is scarcely perceptible; while at the rate of one hundred miles per hour it acquires sufficient force to tear up trees, and destroy the produce of the earth. And, without the aid of a seconds-clock, it would have been scarcely possible to ascertain that a cannon-ball flies at the rate of 600 feet in a second.

The use of Chronometers in geography and navigation is well known; since it is only necessary to ascertain the exact difference in time between two places, to determine their distance east or west of each other.

Graham applied the motion of a Clock showing sidereal time to make a telescope point in the direction of any particular star, even when before the horizon.

Alexander Cummins made a Clock for George III. which registered the height of the barometer during every day throughout the year. This was effected by a circular card, of about 2 feet in diameter, being made to turn round once in a year. The card was divided by radii lines into 365 divisions, the months and days of the month being marked round the edge, while the usual range of the barometer was indicated in inches and tenths by circular lines described from the centre. A pencil with a fine point pressed on the card by a spring, and, held by an upright rod floating on the mercury, faithfully marked the state of the barometer; the card, being carried forward by the clock, brought each day to the pencil. Wren proposed to have a clock constructed on a similar principle, to register the position and force of the wind; which idea has been adopted.

In the Armoury of George IV. was a model of a small cannon, with a clock attached to the lock in such a manner that the trigger could be discharged at any desired time by setting the clock as an alarum.

Breguet contrived a Clock to set a Watch to time. This clock is of the size of a chamber-clock, and has a fork and support on a top to carry the watch. When the clock strikes twelve, a piece of steel like a needle rises, and entering a hole in the rim of the watch-case, comes in contact with a piece which carries the minute-hand, and by pressure makes the hand of the watch correspond with that of the clock, provided the difference be not more than twenty minutes.

The same artist constructed for George IV. a Chronometer which had two pendulums, one making the machine show mean time, the other to make it act as a metronome by beating the time for music. This pendulum was merely a small ball attached to a slight chain carried round a pulley, on the centre of which was an index, which, when brought to any of the musical measures engraved on the scale, shortened or lengthened the chain, so as to cause the pendulum to perform its oscillations in the time required, and a hammer struck on a bell the beats contained in each bar; these would be silently struck by placing a piece of wood between the hammer and the bell; the musical time was also indicated by the seconds-hand of the clock.