Clock History » Uncategorized http://clock-history.com Essays on the history of watch cases Thu, 12 Aug 2010 02:29:28 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 The fire watch http://clock-history.com/the-fire-watch.html http://clock-history.com/the-fire-watch.html#comments Sat, 27 Jun 2009 15:46:10 +0000 admin http://clock-history.com/?p=9 In addition to sun and water, since the beginning of the XIII century and the first fire there, or candle, a clock. This is a thin candle with a length of meter installed on the entire length of the scale. They are relatively accurate with time, but at night still covered the home and church and secular dignitaries, including governors, which were in the middle of XIII century, St. Louis, and in the XIV century – Karl V. To the sides of the candles are sometimes hung on metal pins, which, as of burning and melting wax fell, and their impact on the metal cup candelabras was sort of audible alarm time.

During the entire century as oil and serve people, not only for food but also as an illuminating material, and as a basis for oil lampadnyh hours. Typically, there are simple lamps with an open burner and wick with a glass bulb for the oil, fitted with time scale. The volume of the bulb chosen so that its contents had to continuous light between 6 pm and 8 am. Thickness and length of the burning wick of flame and regulate the amount of oil so as to decrease the level of oil in the flask corresponded to put on a marked time. The initial cylindrical or slightly convex glass vessel, under the oil was a source of error in measuring time. The thing is that evening due to a higher level of oil pressure causes a rapid burn, the closer to the morning. Therefore lampadnye hours later origin had a glass flask in the form of an extended upward pears, so that there is at least partially equalize the rate of combustion of oil and ensure accuracy of the time.

Determine the time of occurrence of these hours is difficult, but you can say for sure what happened is not before learned to produce sufficient quantities of glass. Lampadnyh most hours were in China, which is generally regarded as the cradle of all types of firing hours. In addition to all kinds lampadnyh hours, then later appeared gazosvetnye clock, which the Chinese love so much that some types persisted until the XX century. So far in China report that about 3000 years ago, FO-hee, «the father of China», and its first emperor, established the first fire watches that they measured the day and at night.

There was another type of firing hours, the so-called wick. Their home was part of the wick in the form of a long metal rod, covered with a layer of tar from wood filings. Fire smoldering sawdust, podozhzhennyh sticks at one end, gradually perezhigal thin, transversely strained fibers from suspended to balls that fell in a metal cup. Occasionally turn the wick in the spiral form in itself replace hourly scale.

The most typical for China wick watches took the form of a dragon, in the ridge which strengthens a special holder for the sticks. The speed of the combustion wick to depend on many factors, and to determine its required a lot of experience. On the accuracy of these watches far less solar or water clock.

]]> http://clock-history.com/the-fire-watch.html/feed 0 Solar portable clock http://clock-history.com/solar-portable-clock.html http://clock-history.com/solar-portable-clock.html#comments Sat, 27 Jun 2009 15:42:19 +0000 admin http://clock-history.com/?p=3 Interesting annular solar watches, one of the options for the road – and they both served as decorative pendants. The main part was brass ring of a few centimeters in diameter, combined with other mobile ring equipped with a hole to the solar beam. At the outer surface of the main ring engraved initials months, but against them on the inner surface, was the hour scale. Before the measurement it was necessary to rotate the lower ring, so that the hole for the beam was the name of the desired month. To measure the time clock exhibited so that the ray of sunlight passed through the hole and said hour scale. The first description of the hours – in a ring with a seal – in the book doctor Bonn, was published in Paris in 1500.

One of the most popular varieties of solar traffic hours were so-called lamellar hours. The first copies have appeared in Europe in the years 1451-1463. They usually consisted of two, sometimes three of the same size square of rectangular plates, pendants connected with the bottom plate must be a compass.

There is a description of octagonal wooden sticks with length 160 cm, with a metal tip and carved hour scales. This sundial (ashadah), which had in the Middle Ages, Indian pilgrims. In the handle of this stick is usually pierce through four holes, in which over a scale for the corresponding month slide rod length of about 15 cm so that its edge in the upright stick is casting its shadow on the scale. At the stick was to be 12 scales. As the days away from the solstice at the same time, the same operating conditions, it was enough to have the 8 scales. Name «ashadah» those hours were on the season (June – July), in which the pilgrimage.

Since the beginning of XVI century, the theory of the solar clock started teaching at Wittenberg University, Tübingen, Ingoldshtadta in Prague and Hradec Shtirskom as part of mathematics. Around the same time, there were windows sundial. They were vertical, they face the surface of the window was the church or town hall. The dial is usually consisted of a mosaic panels, filled with lead. Arrow is casting its shadow on the dial, arranged so that the end of the shade, not only watches, but also of the Sun in the zodiac. Transparent Scale allowed to observe the time, without leaving the building.

There were mirrored dial to reflect a mirror at the sunbeam dial, located on the wall of the house. The first such clock JB Benediktus described in the book, published in Turin in 1574. According to some sources, the construction of mirror of hours worked and Nicholas Copernicus, which you can believe, because so far remained on the clock face mirror Castle in Olsztyn presumably his work.

With precision sundial could not match the mechanical, before they began to apply the pendulum oscillator. But after his appearance sundial retain their popularity. The greatest flowering of the production has reached in the XVI and XVII centuries, their creation is at the European mathematics and astronomy. In addition, they remained very long mandatory affiliation of all observatories. Even in the XVIII century of astronomical observatories built in the East, for example in India. Yayi Singh II, Prince of Jaipur, founded in the years 1708-1710 a large observatory in Dilli, put there gnomon height of 18 meters. Shortly thereafter, he ordered to build a similar clock in Benarese, Muttrzhe, Uygaine and Jaipur.

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