Part 1

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TIME AND TIME-TELLERS.

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TIME AND TIME-TELLERS.

* * * * *

BY

JAMES W. BENSON.

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LONDON: ROBERT HARDWICKE, 192, PICCADILLY. 1875.

JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS.

INDEX TO THE ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

1 FRONTISPIECE

2 VIGNETTE

3 THE POCKET RING DIAL 14

4 SILVER POCKET DIAL AND COMPASS 16

5 THE CLEPSYDRA OR WATER CLOCK 19

6 THE BOOK-SHAPED WATCH 35

7 ANCIENT TABLE WATCH 36

8 ANCIENT WATCH WITH DIAL 39

9 OLD ENGLISH ROUND WATCH 40

10 OLD OVAL WATCH 41

11 ANCIENT ROUND ORNAMENTAL WATCH 42

12 OLD ENGLISH CALENDAR WATCH 43

13 MARY QUEEN O' SCOTS WATCH (DEATH'S HEAD) 44

14 ANCIENT WATCH CASE (SCRIPTURAL DESIGN) 45

15 DITTO TABLE WATCH (DITTO) 46

16 GRETTON'S WATCH 48

17 ANCIENT BOX WATCH 49

18 OLIVER CROMWELL'S WATCH 50

19 EARLY ORNAMENTAL ROUND WATCH CASE 51

20 JOHN MILTON'S WATCH 52

21 SMALL EARLY WATCH 54

22 ANCIENT WATCH WITH PENDULUM 55

23 ANCIENT BRASS WATCH WITH LID 56

24 IGNATIUS HUGGEFORD'S WATCH 59

MODERN WATCHES.

25 HORIZONTAL 74

26 SKELETON LEVER 74

27 FULL PLATE LEVER 75

28 THREE-QUARTER PLATE LEVER 75

29 THE CHRONOGRAPH 92

30 PERPETUAL CALENDAR, KEYLESS 96

31 COMPLICATED DITTO AND INDEPENDENT SECONDS 97

32 THE MERIDIAN WATCH 99

ESCAPEMENTS TO WATCHES.

33 THE VERGE ESCAPEMENT 78

34 THE HORIZONTAL DO. 79

35 THE DUPLEX DO. 80

36 THE LEVER DO. 81

37 THE CHRONOMETER DO. 83

BALANCES, ETC.

38 COMPENSATION BALANCE 85

39 OLD BALANCE CLOCK 108

40 CLOCK SPRING 109

41 RACK STRIKING WORK 113

42 BACK OF FRENCH CLOCK 116

43 CARRIAGE CLOCK 118

45 ENGLISH ORMOLU CLOCKS 120-22

46 TELL-TALE CLOCK 123

CLOCK ESCAPEMENTS.

47 CROWN WHEEL ESCAPEMENT 147

48 ANCHOR DO. 148

49 DEAD BEAT DO. 149

50 FRENCH SINGLE-PIN ESCAPEMENT 150

51 THREE LEGG'D GRAVITY DO. 151

52 DOUBLE DITTO DITTO 154

TURRET CLOCKS.

53 WELLS CATHEDRAL CLOCK 135

54 OLD ST DUNSTAN'S DO. 137

55 ST JAMES'S PALACE DO. 138

56 ST PAUL'S CATHEDRAL DO. 140

57 ROYAL FREE HOSPITAL DO. 141

58 MEMORIAL TURRET CLOCK DIAL 157

59 MODERN TURRET CLOCK MOVEMENT 164

60 " " HOUR WHEEL AND SNAIL 166

61 " " THE RACK 168

62 " " THE PENDULUM ROD 169

63 QUARTER OR CHIME CLOCK 171

64 GAS WHEEL FOR ILLUMINATED DIAL 172

65 NEST OF BEVELLED WHEELS CARRYING HANDS 173

66 HAMMER AND BELL 174

67 BENSON'S GREAT CLOCK. THE EXTERIOR 175

68 " " " THE MOVEMENT 176

69 SUN-DIAL 180

TIME AND TIME-TELLERS.

Time cannot be thoroughly defined, nor even properly comprehended by mankind, for our personal acquaintance with it is so brief that our longest term is compared to a span, and to 'the grass which in the morning is green and groweth up, and in the evening is cut down and withered.' The ordinary thinker can scarcely carry his idea of Time beyond that small portion of it which he has known, under the name of life-time. The metaphysician classes Time with those other mysteries,--Space, Matter, Motion, Force, Consciousness, which are the Gordian knots of Mental Science. Time is naturally divided into three most unequal parts,--whereof the Past includes all that has happened until now from that far-distant period when 'Heaven and Earth rose out of chaos;' the Present is but a moment, expended in a breath, to be again like that breath momentarily renewed; the Future is, as the Past,--'a wide unbounded prospect,' an 'undiscovered country,' into which Prophecy itself penetrates but partially, and even then bears back to us but small information; for its language catches the character of a grander clime, and the denizens of this lower earth are incapable of understanding its gorgeous metaphors; the brightness is as blinding as the darkness. We may attempt to pierce the Future by the light which History throws from the Past, but History's record is imperfect; her chronicles are of the rudest and most unreliable character; her most valued memorials serve but to make Past 'darkness visible,' her most ancient registers reach back but a short distance compared with those testimonies which geologists have discovered, and given us veritable 'sermons in stones' about. The Past is, indeed, scarcely less of a mystery than the Future; even the Present we only know in part, but we do know that the brief term during which man 'flits across the stage' of time ere he goes hence and is no more seen, is of inestimable value. Most of us soon make the discovery that the world has much to teach which there is little time to learn and still less time to apply to good purpose. _Ars longa, vita brevis est_, is the general expression of human experience. For every man there are duties and labours for which time is all too short; just as he begins to understand and to perform his work wisely and successfully, the 'spirit of the destinies,' as Mr Carlyle would say, 'calls him away;' but whither he goeth is as great a mystery as whence he cometh. This, however, we do know, no wise man ever disregarded Time, inasmuch as of this treasure there is no laying in a fresh store when life's supply has been exhausted; the wasters, the 'killers' of Time, like the foolish virgins who neglected their lamps, are met invariably with the 'Not so,'--as the door of opportunity is shut in their faces. Like the dial with the inscription '_Nulla vestigia retrorsum_' each man's steps are taken never to be retraced, the act once done can no more be recalled than the shadow on the dial can go backward. What wonder then that the most thoughtful of men are particularly careful of their time, regulating their use of it with the utmost precision and weighing it out as scrupulously as a miser would his gold? What wonder that they should sigh and grieve over a wasted day, and with bitter self-reproach should say to themselves as Titus did, 'Perdidi diem,'--I have lost a day? What wonder is it that such should teach themselves to wrestle with Time, even as Jacob wrestled with the angel, for a blessing; and to regard those reckless ones, in whose butterfly existence are counted only the 'shining hours,'--as the bee might be supposed to regard the idle gnats which frolic in the sunbeams heedless both of to-day and of to-morrow.

The poets are our best interpreters of Time, and they seem never tired of referring to it and symbolising it by every possible figure, emblem, and trope.[1] Celerity of motion and brevity of duration are discovered to be its chief characteristics. Time is therefore depicted as flying,--fast, noiselessly, and uninterruptedly. It is a river, speeding on with imperceptible but resistless pace to the ocean of eternity. It is a stern vigorous old man--Time is already old--rushing by us with never-slackening strides, bearing blessings for each and all, but we must be upon the alert to strive with him for his gifts--'to seize Time by the forelock'--or he will forget to bestow them.

We too often charge upon Time the evil which is the result of our own lack of energy, and thus it happens that although in kindly moments our poets seem to delight in exalting and glorifying him for all manner of enjoyments, at others they can find no word too coarse or uncivil to apply to him. 'Time,' says Shakespeare, 'is a very bankrupt,' adding,

'Nay, he's a thief too; have you not heard men say That time comes stealing on by night and day?'

+----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | FOOTNOTE: | | | | [1] Poebus Apollo in Ovid's Metamorphoses claims that he is Time's | | special exponent:-- | | | | ----'Per me, quod eritque, fuitque, | | Estque, patet; per me concordant carmina nervis.' | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+

Time is, in proverbial philosophy, the most churlish and unaccommodating of acquaintances,--'Time and tide tarry for no man.' Time is always liable to be chided, as we have said, when one feels like Hamlet, 'The times are out of joint;' although our next door neighbour may, with as much or more reason, be blessing the self-same hour we are condemning. Time is indeed all things to all men, and 'travels divers paces with divers persons.' Sweet Rosalind described long ago 'who Time ambles withal, who Time trots withal, and who he stands still withal.' 'I prithee,' asks Orlando, 'who doth he trot withal?' and no matter how often we overhear her reply, we shall listen with delight to the quaint language of the pretty rejoinder,--'Marry, he trots hard with a young maid between the contract of her marriage and the day it is solemnized; if the interim be but a se'nnight, Time's pace is so hard that it seems the length of seven years.' 'And who ambles Time withal?' 'With a priest that lacks Latin and a rich man that hath not the gout; for the one sleeps easily because he cannot study; and the other lives merrily because he feels no pain; the one lacking the burthen of lean and wasteful learning, the other knowing no burthen of heavy tedious penury. These ambles Time withal.' 'Who doth he gallop withal?' 'With a thief to the gallows; for though he go as softly as foot can fall, he thinks himself too soon there.' 'Who stays Time still withal?' 'With lawyers in the vacation; for they sleep between term and term, and then they perceive not how Time wags.'

If Roger Bacon's Brazen-head could have repeated and continued his oracular utterances at fixed intervals he would have been a very sensational performer over some prominent public time-piece of the present day. If only once in twelve months, say at midnight, when the year ends, he could have pronounced his three important speeches, 'Time is;--Time was;--Time's past!' he might have rivalled some of our best actors or orators in attracting the multitude; unfortunately, however, our mechanical clockwork performers have never risen to the dignity of speech, and the secret of Friar Bacon's magic died with the inventor of gunpowder,--which last it is a pity, perhaps, did not also slip out of use and memory along with it. 'Time is, time was, time's past' seems to comprise a whole world of hopes, fears, and lost opportunities, and sounds like a little condensed history of all that ever has happened or ever can happen. Herein we may imagine we can observe the wonder-working qualities of Time, solving all mysteries, bringing everything whether of good or evil to fruition, testing friendship and love, solacing troubled and wounded hearts, and healing all manner of griefs; but then we also remark that he is the abaser of the proud as well as the uplifter of the humble. If he builds, he as surely destroys, being, indeed, the Great Spoiler, _edax rerum_, before whose breath myriads of living things through all generations have faded away, in regular sequence, and towns and cities and the several civilizations of the world have one after another decayed and perished with all their wondrous works, and glories, and aspirations.

'Who shall contend with Time--unvanquished Time, The conqueror of conquerors, and lord Of desolation?'

Time's chronicle is of itself proof of his character, for the very record of his deeds he does not permit to be of long endurance. Time was, before the earliest historian began to take note of him, before the 'twilight of fable,' and before the most primitive symbol. Time himself were too brief to tell of his various experiences, the full value and purport of which we shall never know, until we have bridged the abyss which separates the present from the future. Time and the world, we are told, commenced life simultaneously, and their twin birth was greeted triumphantly 'with the music of the spheres,' the morning stars sang together rejoicingly; and it is also said that their courses shall be simultaneously determined when the edict shall be promulgated that 'Time shall be no more.' When will that great event take place? is a question which has occupied the attention of many theologians and others, who temporarily forget that 'of that day and hour knoweth no man.' As of the end so of the beginning of Time, there is to us no landmark, though geologists are endeavouring to prove that they have traced some of his earliest footprints in this world of ours. Professor Tyndall tells us that 'not for six thousand, nor for sixty thousand, nor for six thousand thousand, but for æons, embracing untold millions of years, this earth has been the theatre of life and death. The riddle of the rocks has been read by the geologist and palæontologist, from subcambrian depths to the deposits thickening over the sea-bottoms of to-day. And upon the leaves of that stone book are stamped the characters, plainer and surer than those formed by the ink of history, which carry the mind back into abysses of past time compared with which six thousand years cease to have a visual angle.'

Although Time is so vast in his operations and so truly marvellous in his many features, it has, nevertheless, been found possible to measure his shorter intervals with the greatest accuracy,--even to but a few seconds in a year. It took some centuries to accomplish this feat, but it is now surely and systematically done. The stages of horological science are some of them remote, but they are well worth studying. The earliest divisions of time were doubtless those made by the operations of Nature, producing day and night,--the sun and moon were the earliest chronometers, and, marked by them, 'the evening and the morning were the first day.' It is even now by noting the recurrence of certain celestial phenomena that we are enabled to certify to ourselves the accuracy of our time-pieces, but although the motion of the heavenly bodies is the standard of computation for lengthened periods, it is found more convenient to reckon short terms, such as seconds, minutes, and hours, by machinery set in motion by a spring or by weights mathematically adjusted, and this in a word has given birth to the science called Horology.

We can readily comprehend the division of time into days and nights, for these, as we have said, are the natural divisions. Let us trace the origin of more arbitrary periods, such as hours, and weeks, and months, and years. First, then, as to days, let it be remembered that the beginning and ending of an ordinary English day differs in several respects from those of other nations. The Jews reckon their day, as do also the Greeks and Italians, from sunset to sunset; the Persians from sunrise to sunrise. The astronomical and nautical day is computed from noon to noon, and is reckoned by 24 hours, not by twice 12,--as, for instance, instead of writing half-past four in the morning of, we will say, Jan. 2, the astronomer would write Jan. 1. 16 h. 30 m. Our ordinary English day is reckoned from 12 to 12 at midnight, after the fashion set by Ptolemy, which has this advantage over the method of reckoning from sunrise or sunset, that the latter periods are continually varying with the seasons of the year. The grouping of seven days into a week is shown in Genesis, but the seventh day is there alone specially named. The Sabbath is still kept by the Jews on the seventh day, but Christians keep the first day of the week in honour of Christ's resurrection, and call it the Lord's Day. After the older planetary method, Sunday was named in honour of the Sun, Monday of the Moon, Tuesday of Tuesco, or Mars, Wednesday of Woden or Mercury, Thursday of Thor, Friday of Friga, Venus, Saturday of Saturn. The Month, named after the Moon in consequence of a month being nearly equal to the time occupied by the Moon in going through all her changes, is again classed under the names lunar or calendar; the lunar month is rather more than 29-1/2 days, but as the solar month is nearly a day longer it would require more than twelve lunar months to make a year, arbitrary additions have been therefore made to each month, some consisting of 30, some of 31 days; and months so arranged to form the calendar are called calendar months, twelve of which make a year of about 365-1/4 days. Until the time of Julius Cæsar the year was reckoned as of 365 days only, a number which after many centuries required the addition of ninety days to rectify, he therefore ordered one of the years to consist of 444 days, and that subsequently every fourth year should contain 366 days. Even this very summary imperial method was attended with its drawbacks and difficulties, for the earth's revolution round the Sun is made in eleven minutes eleven seconds, less than 365-1/4 days, which minutes in the course of about 1600 years required to be taken into consideration, and in 1582 Pope Gregory XIII. took off ten days by making the 5th of October the 15th; but the Gregorian time was not introduced into England till 1752 when the error amounted to about eleven, so eleven days were subtracted from 1752 leaving it only 354 days,--much to the indignation of the illiterate people of that time, who clamoured, assembled in great mobs to testify to their sense of the great injury inflicted upon them, 'Give us back our Eleven days,'--one of Hogarth's prints of the 'Election' exhibits a paper containing this very inscription. The fury of the populace at being robbed of its precious time availed not; the day after the 2nd of September, 1752, was made the 14th of September, and from that time dated the New Style, since which the year has been almost exactly correct. Up to 1752 the legal year began in England on the 25th of March, and it was usual up to that day to employ two dates, as 1750-1; but since the change of style the year has commenced with the first of January,--nearly midwinter. As there is one day more than fifty-two weeks in a year every year begins one day later in the week than the preceding year; and after leap-year two days later. The only country in Europe which still retains the Old Style is Russia, --the difference between the styles, now twelve days, is usually indicated by O.S. and N.S., or as in one or two of our watch illustrations by 'Russian' and 'Gregorian.' As regards the smaller divisions of time, it should be noted that the minute and the hour are thus reckoned,--the Earth divided into 360 degrees, turning upon its axis once every twenty-four hours, brings fifteen degrees under the sun each hour, and makes those fifteen degrees of longitude equivalent to one hour of time,--fifteen geographical miles being equivalent to one minute of time.

The earliest horologe or hour measurer of which history makes mention is that called the _Polos_, and the _Gnomon_. Herodotus (lib. II.) ascribes their invention to the Babylonians, but Phavorinus claims it for Anaximander, and Pliny for Anaximenes. The _Gnomon_, which was the more simple and probably the more ancient instrument, consisted simply of a staff or pillar fixed perpendicularly in a sunny place, the shadow of which was measured by feet upon the place where it fell,--the flight of time being computed thereby. In later times the word _Gnomon_ was the title of the sun-dial, and it is the name still in use for the style or finger which throws the shadow on the dial and thus indicates the hour. The _Polos_ or _Heliotropion_ was no doubt a superior instrument to the earliest _Gnomon_, but, from its being so seldom mentioned, we may suppose it not to have been so generally used. The _Polos_ consisted of a basin, in the middle of which the perpendicular staff or finger was erected, and marked by lines the twelve portions of the day. The _Dial_ was but another form of _Polos_; its name indicates a Roman origin,--namely, from _Dies_, a day, but there was a Greek sun-dial called _Sciathericum_, from _skia_, a shadow. The invention is said to have been derived by the Jews from the Babylonians, to whom, as we have seen, Herodotus ascribed it, and there is mention made in the xxxviii. of Isaiah of the dial of Ahaz,--a king who began to reign 741 B.C. The form of the Dial of Ahaz has not been ascertained; but there is reason to believe that the ancient Jews and the Brahmins were acquainted with the uses of the dial and applied it to astronomical purposes. Dials were, it is said, not known in Rome before 293 B.C., when one was set up by Papirius Cursor the Roman General, near the Temple of Quirinus. At Athens there is an octagonal temple of the Winds still standing, which shows on each side the lines of a vertical dial and the centres where the _Gnomons_ were placed. At one time the art of Dialling was most assiduously studied; its rudiments may be described as follows: