What is Time? Spring-loaded and Fantastic Clocks

Developments from mechanical to finger-ring mounted clocks took only 200 years of refinement and craftsmanship.

(This is the sixth post of Time and Clocks, the thread that follows Time and Calendars.)

Mechanical clocks were large and heavy, made of brass or iron and very expensive to build. As interest in them increased and as technical skills developed, it became possible to make smaller versions of clocks driven by a spring instead of a weight which could be taken from one room to another. The use of the spring-driven mechanism instead of weights started in the mid 1400s; one of the first known was the now disputed Burgundy clock of Philip the Good, in 1430, which has the first recorded use of the fusee wheel to regulate the diminishing force of the steadily unwinding spring.

Such inventions enabled much smaller clocks to be made and led increasingly specialised craftsmen dedicate themselves to miniaturisation using special tools to make the parts. In the early, large mechanical clocks, a slightly rough finishing was not magnified into a significant interruption to the movement; on a smaller clock, of course, this was very different.

Miniaturisation

The whole of Europe was fascinated by clocks, focusing on several south German cities, such as Ulm and Nuremberg, where c.1500–10 Peter Henlein is credited with making the precurser of the modern watch, a small drum clock (Leonardo da Vinci is also said to have designed one, but left it unmade). The art of the watchmaker was highly skilled, as one who could not only make clocks but make them well enough to be very small.

Clock, Peter Henlein, (1510) and a small ship clock.(1585)

Drum clock by Peter Henlein, (1510); Mechanical medieval galleon intended to announce banquets at court. At the base of the main mast a small clock show. (1585).

Miniaturisation led to fashionable extremes, with Francis I of France buying two examples of a tiny clock grafted on to a dagger’s head. Queen Elizabeth I had a finger-ring clock which contained an alarm and a small prong which emerged to gently scratch her finger. Mary, Queen of Scots was long thought to have had a skull’s head watch, although this was later discovered to have been made well over 100 years after her reign.

Fantastic Clocks

Improvements in accuracy were made as modifications to the escapement by the Swiss horologist and the greatest clockmaker of his day, Jost Bürgi (c. 1552–1610) who, in 1580 devised one of the most striking pieces of the era, a mechanical globe clock with a golden astronomical globe as the centrepiece. He was also responsible for introducing a novel and improved escapement, the ‘cross-beat’. Other fantastic clocks were made, with automata, astrological maps, astronomical tables and fine arrays of bells.

Equation Clock 1591 and Celestial Globe (1585) by Jost Bürgi

Equation clock, made for Landgrave William IV of Hesse-Kassel by Jost Burgi and Hans Jacob Emck (1591); Celestial Globe (1585) by Jost Bürgi

The cost of such timepieces was inevitably very high. Even the less-expensive portable clocks or watches could only be afforded by wealthy clients. They were still inaccurate and, as such, they tended to be a physical manifestation of the power of their owner, paraded as symbols of wealth and craftsmanship. They were used extensively as ambassadorial gifts in much the same way that Haroun al-Rashid, the Caliph of ninth-century Baghdad, sent his elaborate and stunning clock to Charlemagne 700 years earlier.