page_title: Clock
section_title: Mechanical water clocks
hierarchical_section_title: Clock / History of time-measuring devices / Mechanical water clocks
caption_attribution_description: English: Su Song's Water Clock (?). This picture is a scaled model of Su Song's water-powered clock tower. The original clock tower was 35 feet tall. It was a 3 story tower with an armillary sphere on the roof, and a celestial globe on the third floor. This picture was taken in July 2004 from an exhibition at Chabot Space &amp; Science Center in Oakland, California. The quality of the picture is not ideal because flash photography was not allowed.
context_page_description: A clock is a device used to measure, keep, and indicate time. The clock is one of the oldest human inventions, meeting the need to measure intervals of time shorter than the natural units: the day, the lunar month, and the year. Devices operating on several physical processes have been used over the millennia.
  Some predecessors to the modern clock may be considered as "clocks" that are based on movement in nature: A sundial shows the time by displaying the position of a shadow on a flat surface. There is a range of duration timers, a well-known example being the hourglass. Water clocks, along with the sundials, are possibly the oldest time-measuring instruments. A major advance occurred with the invention of the verge escapement, which made possible the first mechanical clocks around 1300 in Europe, which kept time with oscillating timekeepers like balance wheels.
  Traditionally in horology, the term clock was used for a striking clock, while a clock that did not strike the hours audibly was called a timepiece. In general usage today, a "clock" refers to any device for measuring and displaying the time.
context_section_description: The first geared clock was invented in the 11th century by the Arab engineer Ibn Khalaf al-Muradi in Islamic Iberia; it was a water clock that employed a complex gear train mechanism, including both segmental and epicyclic gearing, capable of transmitting high torque. The clock was unrivalled in its use of sophisticated complex gearing, until the mechanical clocks of the mid-14th century. Al-Muradi's clock also employed the use of mercury in its hydraulic linkages, which could function mechanical automata. Al-Muradi's work was known to scholars working under Alfonso X of Castile, hence the mechanism may have played a role in the development of the European mechanical clocks. Other monumental water clocks constructed by medieval Muslim engineers also employed complex gear trains and arrays of automata. Arab engineers at the time also developed a liquid-driven escapement mechanism which they employed in some of their water clocks. Heavy floats were used as weights and a constant-head system was used as an escapement mechanism, which was present in the hydraulic controls they used to make heavy floats descend at a slow and steady rate.
  A water-powered cogwheel clock was created in China by Yi Xing and Liang Lingzan. This is not considered an escapement mechanism clock as it was unidirectional, the Song dynasty polymath and genius Su Song (1020–1101) incorporated it into his monumental innovation of the astronomical clock-tower of Kaifeng in 1088. His astronomical clock and rotating armillary sphere still relied on the use of either flowing water during the spring, summer, autumn seasons and liquid mercury during the freezing temperature of winter (i.e. hydraulics). A mercury clock, described in the Libros del saber, a Spanish work from 1277 consisting of translations and paraphrases of Arabic works, is sometimes quoted as evidence for Muslim knowledge of a mechanical clock. A mercury-powered cogwheel clock was created by Ibn Khalaf al-Muradi.
  In the 13th century, Al-Jazari, an engineer from Mesopotamia (lived 1136–1206) who worked for Artuqid king of Diyar-Bakr, Nasir al-Din, made numerous clocks of all shapes and sizes. A book on his work described 50 mechanical devices in 6 categories, including water clocks. The most reputed clocks included the Elephant, Scribe and Castle clocks, all of which have been successfully reconstructed. As well as telling the time, these grand clocks were symbols of status, grandeur and wealth of the Urtuq State.
caption: A scale model of Su Song's Astronomical Clock Tower, built in 11th-century Kaifeng, China. It was driven by a large waterwheel, chain drive, and escapement mechanism.
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