The age-herald., 1898-01-02

From the New York Post.
 To modern man the clock or watch is a necessity. To be without the scope of eith- CT is tantamount to being on an uninhabit- ed island or a raft in the Pacific. Up-to- date life so largely depends on the exact allocation of time, that the man of today cannot understand how nations existed ere clocks ticked the hours away. He cannot understand any form of civilization exist ing without it's handspring the clock. Yet this indispensable accompaniment of our daily life says the London Standard, is but just over five centuries old, which, in comparison with the long duration of an- cient vanished but complex civilizations of which the Egyptian is the most consp1cu- ous is a very moderate extent of time.
 The first clock in our sense of the word, seems to have been (for we are not sure as to what clocks they were which, in SIP, the Venetians invented, of which they sent a specimen to Constantinople) one made in 1874 for Charles V. of France. It was a very big one, weighing several hundred weights, and made by a converted Arab named Henry de vic and those who are curious may find full details in Froissart This clock was put up in the Round Tower
 
 assembled to watch the noveltys action and details. It is not with this, however, or any of the succeeding efforts of clock makers, that we are concerned, but far anterior date with the contrivances by which men measured time and supplied in some degree the place of the clock And back to ~aotest ages must go.
 The water-clock, otherwise the clep3ydra, seems, uniers the Psychologists find some thing fresh in that land of incessant dis
 
 to have been the first scientific effort at noting the hours. A good many people talk glibly about the clepsydra who neither know it's precise onstructicn nor the ma tion who have the credit of constructing it. That belongs ito the Assyrian, and as far back as at least over 2,600 years ago the clepsydra was used in Nineveh under the sway of the second Sardanapalus. It was brass vessel of cylindrical shape, holding several gallcns of water, which could only emerge through cd,e tiny hole in the side. Thus the trlckling of the fluid marked a certain amount of time and the water was emptied about half dozen times per diem. In Nineveh there was one at the palace, and one in each principal district These were all filled by signal from a. watchman on atower at the moment of sunrise, and each had an attendant whose business was to refill the clepsydra as soon as it was emptied, the fact being announced by criers. much ss in the last century tho watchmen drowsily shouted the hours at night throughout the streets of LohdoI. Some five centuries latter an anonymous genius made a great Improvement by in- serting toothN1' wheels which revolving turned two hands on diol in clock-fashion, thus showing the progress of the tinIa. which from one flMng to emptying aver aged two hours and half. In this shape the clepsydra, which was then chiefly pno- curable in Egypt became introduced to various other nations, including Rome, where 1t fourished with various splendid embellishments until the end of the em- pire.
 The sun-dial stands next in the order of time to the clepsydra. It was invented at Alexandria some five centuries and a half B. c. Unlike the water-clock, it flourished through all the centuries even unto our own days, where it fitly adrons many stately or simple old-world garden and smooth shady lawn. It was naturally of greater constant use in other climes than those of our "brumous' isle. from the far larger amount of sunshine these enjoyed. But some fine and famous sun-dials have long existed within the realm, and their in scriptions have not been their least charm of the past. During the Dark Ages the clepsydra seems to have vanished with the Roman empire It's re-introducton into Europe is due to that hero of our young