The History of The Mechanical Clock

How and Why We Started Caring about Time

Mar 12, 2023

This is part of a bigger series “An Ingenuity: Mechanical Clocks”, which I will be writing and publishing over the course of a couple weeks.

The Mechanical Clock is one of the most beautiful pieces of Engineering in existence. Its story is not only one of timekeeping, but of ingenuity and precision. It is the story of a technology that forever revolutionized how we live and organize ourselves. It is the story of a tool that permeates all our lives and drives us even after 700 years since it was first invented.

The Time Keepers

Not those from Marvel, but the one behind them: The Clock

Imagine a life without time or something to keep track thereof. How would you live differently? Would you value your time as much as you do right now? What would your day look like if you didn’t live it by the hour?

Clocks have become such an important part of our society that we cannot imagine a life without them. We plan out our day by the hour; create schedules. We organize going to classes, work, or social gatherings at specific hours. We are creatures of habit. We wake up at a certain time, eat at a certain time, go to bed at a certain time, and even watch the latest episode of our favorite TV show at a certain time. Without something to keep time, our life would be as abstract as The Cones of Dunshire.

But, there was a life before clocks. A life before people felt the need to invent clocks. What led to the necessity to create them? How did it influence everyone’s lives? And how did our lifestyle become forever tied to the three hands of a mechanical clock?

Let’s find out.

I. The History of the Mechanical Clock

Timekeeping has a very ancient history, dating back to the Babylonians and Egyptians. The earliest clocks made by humans were grounded in physical, scientific principles rather than complex mechanics.

The sundial and the water clock are both examples of this. By taking advantage of the Sun’s relative motion in the sky or flow rates, respectively, these timekeeping devices were made to keep track of the passing of each day.

However, the water clock functioned more as a “timer” than a clock since it didn’t associate a “number” with the time of the day. These clocks also had to be modified based on the season and your location on the planet. Nevertheless, they got the job done, which was to make time a more tangible idea for humans.

Egyptian invention Water Clock | Water clock, Ancient history archaeology, Ancient greece — An Egyptian Water Clock

These clocks lacked two things: accuracy and reliability. They involved human intervention to correctly interpret the time, and often involved making modifications to the mechanism. The best water clock accuracy was 15 minutes a day (for context, most modern mechanical clocks today have an accuracy of 1-2 sec a day - a reduction factor of nearly 900%).

So how did the leap from arbitrary time to precision timekeeping happen? To know this, we need to go back to the 14th century; to a time when Europe was in shackles…

The Black Death

The pandemic of the 14th century, aka ‘The Black Death’, ravaged Europe during the mid-14th century. It was a time of emerging empires and new discoveries. Tradeships and colonies were sailing across continents, transferring not only goods but the disease with them. It lasted from 1346-1352 (+- 1 year) and wiped out nearly 30-50% of Europe’s population. However, it left many things in its wake - one of them being the widespread adaptation of clocks.

“When death rides on your back, time also becomes precious. Minutes seem to count for something. The Church-centered world before the plague had been oddly timeless. Now people worked long hours, chasing capital gain, in a life that could end at any moment. The first new technology of the plague years was time-keeping -- mechanical clocks and hourglasses.”
- The Black Death by John Lienhard

The Black Death reminded humans of the fragility of their lives and the finiteness of their time on this planet. Never before had we experienced the need to be mindful of our time. But now we wanted to make the most out of it - to become more productive creatures.

The Black Death did to Clocks what the Covid-19 pandemic did to Zoom: it made it popular.

“…the device spread so quickly that by the 14th century no place could be considered a proper town if it did not have a public clock in its town center.”
- Mattie Glenhaber

Clocks started being referred to in literature and paintings. Towns started competing with each other to have the most extravagant clocks. Public clocks were erected that showed the time of the day and rang bells at the hour.

Tour-de-l’Horloge: The First Public Clock in Paris, 14th Century

Clocks were no longer a timekeeping mechanism, but also a status symbol. They became an integral part of society and everyone’s life.

But none of this would’ve been possible without a key invention; an invention that was, in fact, designed independently of mechanical clocks. Although the origin of this is debated, it is often attributed to a French Architect, Villard de Honnecourt, who had visualized it while designing an instrument to observe planets accurately during the 1250s.

Little did he know that he had created a mechanism that would forever redefine the realm of Mechanical Clocks.

Enter, the “Escapement Mechanism”.

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