What is Time? Mechancial Clocks, Jake Jackson's These Fantastic Worlds

What is Time? Mechanical Clocks

The emergence of mechanical devices as a means of telling the time was the start of a revolution in timekeeping, relieving the general public from reliance on freezing waterclocks or cloud-obstructed sundials. (This is the fifth post of Time and Clocks, the thread that follows Time and Calendars.) Europe emerged from its Dark Ages, with stability and order spread throughout …

What is Time? Simple Clocks, Jake Jackson's These Fantastic Worlds

What is Time? Other Simple Clocks

Human ingenuity is evidenced by the many different methods used to measure time, before the development of springs and pendulums. (This is the fourth post of Time and Clocks, the thread that follows Time and Calendars.) In the Dark Ages of Western Europe, many of the monasteries isolated from the scholarship and learning of the Arabian Peninsula and the Asia …

What is Time? Waterclocks, Jake Jackson's These Fantastic Worlds

What is Time? Waterclocks

Waterclocks represented a step away from reliance on celestial bodies and are still in use today. (This is the third post of Time and Clocks, the thread that follows Time and Calendars.) Waterclocks classically have a hole at the bottom or near the base of a vessel which starts the day full, ending it empty. As the Egyptians discovered, to …

What is Time? Sunclocks, Jake Jackson's These Fantastic Worlds

What is Time? Sunclocks

The use of the sun to approximate the time is as old as recorded time itself and there are many different methods of using the shadow created by the sun. (This is the second post of Time and Clocks, the thread that follows Time and Calendars.) The first measure of the hours was a simple stick. The Babylonians, in the …