When was clocks invented

Even though this exact water clock never found popularity outside of china, its mechanical engineering proved to be basis for modern European and Islamic clocks that were created during following centuries. European mechanical clocks that were not powered by water slowly started appearing in 13th and 14th century, but their weight and complexity made them usable only by scientists who created them.

Moment that finally enabled mechanical analogue clocks to function correctly came with Jacob Zech of Prague in he based his device on earlier designs that were not used in clocks , and were greatly expanded with the works of Galileo Galilei and Christiaan Huygens who introduced pendulum.

Historically speaking, fist modern clock was created by German inventor Peter Henlein who introduced to the world Spring-driven clock around This lets the water out at a steady rate and hours were marked off with lines inside the water reservoir. Candle Clocks were another ancient timekeeping device that was used widely around the world from China to England and Mesopotamia. Timesticks were developed in places like India and Tibet and the hourglass which was widely used throughout Europe arose a little later.

Sundials were developed around this time too and provided a good estimate for the hour of the day - at least when it was sunny. Many if not all of these early time-keeping devices had their inherent problems, however.

Shadow Clocks and Sundials didn't work at night, water clocks were notoriously inaccurate as water flows at different rates depending on the ambient temperature. Water also has the annoying habit of freezing in winter and evaporating during summer. What was needed was a timekeeping device that could overcome these problems. The answer, as it turned out, was to go mechanical.

The first escapements appear in around the 3rd Century BC in Greece. These were simple water-powered versions that were able to transfer rotational energy into intermittent motion. The Chinese were able to develop a mercury version in around the 10th Century with the direct ancestors of mechanical cocks appearing in 11th Century Iran. The first true mechanical clocks appeared in 14th Century Europe. These early mechanical clocks employed the verge escapement mechanism with a foliot or balance wheel for accurate timekeeping.

The first examples were truly huge devices and relied on the use of heavy-weights to drive the clock's hands. They were often built in tall towers and were able to keep relatively good time for long periods. Most often only lost about 2 hours a day. Until mechanical clocks were invented in the 13th century there were various ways of telling the time. The earliest method of telling the time of day was the sundial. It is not known when the sundial was invented but it was certainly used in Ancient Egypt and Ancient Iraq.

They are also mentioned in the Old Testament. Other ancient civilizations such as the Greeks and the Romans also used sundials. Over time sundials gradually became more accurate and they remained a common way of telling the time until the early 19th century.

About BCE the Egyptians invented the water clock. It consisted of two containers of water, one of which was higher than the other. Water flowed along a tube from the higher container to the lower at a steady rate.

Rings were marked on the inside of the lower container and when the water level reached one it meant another hour had passed. The Saxons used a candle clock. A candle was divided into segments and it took an hour for each segment to burn. The mechanical clock was invented in the Middle Ages. Who made the first one and when is not known but it was around the end of the 13th century.

In a clock is recorded in a church in Italy. The oldest working clock in the world is in Salisbury Cathedral. It dates from and it has no dial. Instead, it chimes the hours. Early clocks were normally in churches and they were very heavy because they were worked by weights. However, in about the coiled spring was invented and it made possible portable clocks.

The first watches were made in Newton was wrong, however. In the board finally met for the first time to discuss the work of a most unlikely candidate, a Yorkshire carpenter named John Harrison. Harrison's bulky longitude timekeeper had been used on a voyage to Lisbon and on the return trip had proved its worth by correcting the navigator's dead reckoning of the ship's longitude by 68 miles.

Its maker, however, was dissatisfied. Instead of asking the board for a West Indies trial, he requested and received financial support to construct an improved machine. After two years of work, still displeased with his second effort, Harrison embarked on a third, laboring on it for 19 years.

But by the time it was ready for testing, he realized that his fourth marine timekeeper, a five-inch-diameter watch he had been developing simultaneously, was better.

On a voyage to Jamaica in , Harrison's oversize watch performed well enough to win the prize, but the board refused to give him his due without further proof. A second sea trial in confirmed his success. Harrison was reluctantly granted 10, Harrison's breakthrough inspired further developments. By the marine chronometer was so refined that its fundamental design never needed to be changed. Recognizing the potential market for a low-cost timekeeper, two investors in Waterbury, Conn.

In they gave Eli Terry, a clockmaker in nearby Plymouth, a three-year contract to manufacture 4, longcase clock movements from wood. A substantial down payment made it possible for Terry to devote the first year to fabricating machinery for mass production.

By manufacturing interchangeable parts, he completed the work within the terms of the contract. A few years later Terry designed a wooden-movement shelf clock using the same volume-production techniques. Unlike the longcase design, which required the buyer to purchase a case separately, Terry's shelf clock was completely self-contained. The customer needed only to place it on a level shelf and wind it up. For the relatively modest sum of 15, many average people could now afford a clock. This achievement led to the establishment of what was to become the renowned Connecticut clockmaking industry.

Before the expansion of railroads in the 19th century, towns in the U. For example, because noon occurs in Boston about three minutes before it does in Worcester, Mass. The expanding railroad network, however, needed a uniform time standard for all the stations along the line. Astronomical observatories began to distribute the precise time to the railroad companies by telegraph. The first public time service, introduced in , was based on clock beats wired from the Harvard College Observatory in Cambridge, Mass.

The Royal Observatory introduced its time service the next year, creating a single standard time for Great Britain. The U. By the next year the governments of all nations had recognized the benefits of a worldwide standard of time for navigation and trade.

Signatories chose the Royal Observatory as the prime meridian zero degrees longitude, the line from which all other longitudes are measured in part because two thirds of the world's shipping already used Greenwich time for navigation.

The problem of mass-fabricating interchangeable parts for watches, however, was considerably more complicated because the precision demanded in making the necessary miniaturized components was so much greater. Although improvements in quantity manufacture had been instituted in Europe since the late 18th century, European watchmakers' fears of saturating the market and threatening their workers' jobs by abandoning traditional practices stifled most thoughts of introducing machinery for the production of interchangeable watch parts.

Disturbed that American watchmakers seemed unable to compete with their counterparts in Europe, which controlled the market in the late s, a watchmaker in Maine named Aaron L.

Dennison met with Edward Howard, the operator of a clock factory in Roxbury, Mass. Howard and his partner gave Dennison space to experiment and develop machinery for the project. By the fall of , 20 watches had been completed under Dennison's supervision. His workmen finished watches by the following spring, and 1, more were produced a year later.

By that time the manufacturing facilities in Roxbury were proving too small, so the newly named Boston Watch Company moved to Waltham, Mass.

The American Waltham Watch Company, as it eventually became known, benefited greatly from a huge demand for watches during the Civil War, when Union Army forces used them to synchronize operations.

Improvements in fabrication techniques further boosted output and cut prices. Meanwhile other U. The Swiss, who had previously dominated the industry, grew concerned when their exports plummeted in the s. The investigator they sent to Massachusetts discovered that not only was productivity higher at the Waltham factory but production costs were less. Even some of the lower-grade American watches could be expected to keep reasonably good time.

The watch was at last a commodity accessible to the masses. Because women had worn bracelet watches in the 19th century, wristwatches were long considered feminine accoutrements.