Putnam patriot., 1923-07-13
TIME AND TIMEPIECES"
BY FLORENCE DANFORTH
P. H s, 1928

Of the essay written by Miss Florence Danforth, a member of this years se- nior elaSs of Putnam High school. and who was supposed to have given her essay before the audience that assem- bled last Thursday evening in the Bradley Theatre for the graduation exercises. Unfortunately Miss Dan forth was stricken with a cold, which so affected her throat, that on gradu- ation night she could hardly speak out loud. She was, therefore, unable to give her essay.
 Though her audience was cheated out of bearing Miss Danforth present her essay, on graduation night, they have this opportunity of reading wha. she had written for the occasion.
 Below The Patriot presents the essay in full:
 Time AS Old Az History
 The story of the watch that you hold in your hand today began count less centuries ago, and is as long as the history of the human race.
 When the cave man went out at sunrise to get his daily supply of food he would point to some rock and tell his mate that he would come home again with the spells of his hunt when the sun reached that point.
 So through all this early age man continued to regulate his affairs by the timepieees of the sky-that is, the sun, the moon and the stars. He divided time roughly into days and parts of days, into nights, into moons and seasons-determining the latter by the migration of the birds. the budding of the trees and flowers, and the falling of the leaves
 However. we have nothing definite to show the habits and customs of daily life of these peoples, as the few records of their activities have been preserved by the merest accident.
 Were Sun Worshipper.
 But coming down to the dawn of recorded history we find that the anci- ent peoples of Egypt worshippei the sun. the moon and the stars as these bodies seemed to be life-giv.ng and Were tte only forces that tfcv knew about Hence the priests gave up much of their time to the study srd movements of the heavenly bodies. They discovered that the sun chang ed the points at which it rose and set, and that the motion from farthest north to farthest south and return took up period that they called their year
 In orde- to divide heir wear into smaller units, they dev.srd the sodiae, showing the course of tie sun as t passed by the cancellations. There were twelve of these groups of stars, and the region of these groups was di- v.ded into eqdil parts; consequently, the sun passing from any given point, arOur d the hea s.rs Q the sarl, point, took in so doing. a period of time that was divided into twelfths-equalilng one of our months.
 Told Time By Moon
 Another way of dividing the year into twelfths was by the moon. They noiieed tha il took about thirty set- tings of the sun, or days, for the moon to wax and wane, so one moon or one month eorresponded to the passing of the sun through one sign of the zodiac From the month"; ,-the day, the hour and the minute were easily planned, because of the period of time from sunset to sunset.
 The early Greeks, too, were very superstitious. They believed many of the forces of nature to be gods, and Apollo, who, they thought, daily drove his flaming chariot across the sky, was the great divinity of the sun. They thought that gods, through their me dium of nature. punished mortals for their Wrongdoings. Imagine, then, two armies about to go to battle when something suddenly went wrong with the sun. To their amazement some thing, perhaps the hand of Apollo, would pass over the face of the sky. The soldiers would forget to fight and would run in terror. A weird light would fall over the earth and soon it would be as dark as night Birds and animals would go to their rest. No fur ther evidence was needed by the su- perstitious and frightened soldiers. It must be that Apollo was grievously angered, so they laid down their arms. Then the sun god would reward them by driving his chariot over the sky again.
 Introduce Sun Dial
 Human nature is very ingenious. One of the earliest man-made methods af telling time was the sun-dial. They found that the shadow Of an upright stick or stone would mark only one point of time each day. Why not place two stones, or even more, to get more markings? Such a procedure would be more useful because it would indi- cate the time of other happenings m the course of the day. The sun would pass across the sky, making shadows around these poles-and they found that the easiest way to divide the shadows was to have the sticks in 8 circle formation so as to make an evenly divided series of shadows. That was probably the origin of our telling time by hours.
 The sun-dial, however, was not a satisfactory way of telling time. One could not use a sun-dial if there were no sun. nor could he use t if It rained, nor at night
 Soon a more exact and satisfactory recorder of time was found in the wa ter-clock. The first water-clock was simply a far with a tiny hole in the bottom. through which water would drip very evenly. If a jar could be found that would last twenty-four hours. twenty-four markings eoald be made on the inside of the jar, by which one could find out how many