Always a good time for clocks and watches

Clocks and watches have always fascinated me. As a kid, anytime I found an old clock or watch around, I was eager to see how it worked, to take it apart -- and don't remember ever getting one successfully put back together again.

My grandfather had an old pocket watch he swore was a jeweled mechanism "railroad man's watch," which meant nothing to me but it conveyed the air of mystery and importance that has always surrounded time and timekeeping for me.

From sundials tracking day into night to atomic clocks that are accurate to within small fractions of a second, and from water clocks to titanium digital wristwatches, clocks have been around in one form or another as long as the human race has been around. We've always had some concept of time, of progression from past to present, and we've created a whole culture of timepieces to keep track that progression.

Ancient timepieces probably began with simple sundials, probably starting out as simple as a stick in the ground with a circle of markings that tracked the stick's shadow as the sun moved. Sundials became more than simple sticks, however, taking on decorative appearance and being constructed of stone and bronze for year-around, all-weather durability. Today, sundials have become outdoor decor, gracing many lawns, gardens, and public places. Not reliable enough for modern culture, these practical timekeepers of prehistory and ancient times have become lovely symbols of homage to the fundamental nature of time for many of us.

As civilization progressed, our desire to order past, present, and future brought the invention of ever more elaborate and accurate clocks. Although sundials seemed obvious as a way of measuring the passage of time during a day, the most elaborate ancient clocks used for several millenia (until the advent of European pendulum clocks) were water clocks. No one, really, can be credited as the inventor of the water clock, although there are ancient Egyptian records of water clocks. One of those Egyptian accounts was recorded in a tomb inscription of a 16th century BC Egyptian court official named Amenemhet, who was given credit for inventing that particular device.

But, since water clocks developed independently in many ancient Asian and Mediterranean cultures, old Amenemhet was probably getting more credit than he deserved. Most likely, water clocks developed throughout the ancient world as objects and ideas were spread around through various trade routes. These clever clocks have been found in records not only from Egypt but from Babylonia, China, Greece, Rome, India, and many other regions.

Water clocks were of two fundamental types -- inflow, where a measured rate and amount of water flowed into a basin or bowl, and outflow, where a measured rate and amount of water flowed out from a basin or bowl. Interestingly enough, while sundials focused on measuring units in a day, water clocks were structured around seasons and astrological symbols, then divided into smaller daily and hourly flow intervals.

The first real clocks as we "modern" people understand them were huge pendulum and gear contraptions. But unlike today's highly prized, antique or modern grandfather clocks, most of those pendulum clocks didn't even have what we would recognize as a "dial" or "face" to display time. Instead, such early clocks marked the time with chimes or bells.

These mechanical behemoths were often built into churches or high up on public towers. Such early mechanical clocks are known from written historical records to have been around in Europe and even China as early as 1000-1100 AD. None of those early clocks seem to have survived the ages. The earliest European clock still surviving and operating is one in Salisbury Cathedral in Britain. It dates from 1386.