The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1889-03-30
HISTORY OF TlME-PIECES.
How the Sun Dial of Ahaz Was Improved
In Subsequent Centuries.

How the Sun Dial OF AhaZ was improved
In Subsequent Centuries.
At a recent meeting of the Balloon
Society of Great Britain, an address
was given by Mr.. James Kendall on
1.-THE British Watch Industry" The
lecturer stated that the sun dial OF
Ahaz is the first record of a time-keeper,
that the obelisks of the Egyptians were
intended as gnomons, and that the
next record of sun dial was the hemi-
cicle of the Chaldean astronomer Be-
rosus, 450 B. G. The clepsydra. or
water clock, was the next continuance
for measuring time, used by the Chal-
deans; but to whomsoever the early
discovery of timc-keepers may be due,
he said that clocks were set up in
churches as early as liza, and in the
reign of Henry vi. a pension was
granted to the Dean of st. Stephens
for taking charge of clock in Palace
Yard, Westminster. In 1926 Richard
Wallingford, abbot of ST. Adams,
placed a clock in his monastery which
showed the hours, the motion OF the
sun, the changes of the moon, the ebb
and flow of the tide, etc, and the ac-
count of this clock is still preserved in
the Bodleian Library at Oxford. In
1910 Peter Rightfoot, monk of Glas-
tonbury Abbey, made a clock which,
at the Reformation. was removed to
AWells Cathedral, and the original is
now to be seen at the South Kensing-
ton Museum. The clock for the Strass-
burg Cathedral was begun 1852, and
finally completed in 1874 by Conradus
Daspodius.
The use of the pendulum for secur-
ing accuracy of time was first adopted
by Vincent Calico, in 1913, and the
anchor escapement, for regulating it,,
by DR.. Hook, 1866; and he stated that
little progress was made since that
time until Mr.. Dennison, now Lord
Grimthorpe, designed the clock for the
Victoria Tower of the Houses of Parlia-
ment in 1854. The most remarkable
episode in the construction of time
keepers is the level escapement, in
vented by Thomas Nudge, in ITO, the
last epoch in the history of the watch.
The progress of the last fifty years in
watch making has consisted rather in
the perfection of proportions than in
the introduction of new principles, for
even the invention of winding from the
pendant instead OF a watch key is tardy
appreciation OF an invention patented
more than half century ago.
At the International Inventions Ex-
hibition of 1885, Kendall & Dent ex-
hibited Theological novelty of a watch
with two dials placed back to back,
with the movement between them. On
one dial was marked the old division of
twelve hours, and on the other the sug-
gested hour circle with twenty-lour
divisions, and this invention attracted
considerable attention from horologists
and mechanicians. Mr.. Kendall then
referred to the important uses to which
time-keepers are devoted by the use of
marine chronometers to enable the
navigator to ascertain his longitude as
he travels over the sea. In Ills the
English Government offered a reward
of 100000 for determining the longi-
tude to within sixty miles, 915,000
within forty miles, and, 100000 within
thirty miles; and this reward was Sc
cured, after thirty years of unremitting
labor. by John Harrison, carpenter,
of Faulty, in Y Yorkshire, who succeeded,
in 1864, in producing the present ma
rine chronometer.--N Y. Observer.