.-J. 



I. A CATALOG OF THE COLLECTION OF WATCHES BE- ? 



LONGING TO MR. H. J. HEINZ OF PITTSBURGH | 



AND DEPOSITED BY HIM IN THE | 



CARNEGIE MUSEUM. | 



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By Douglas Stewart, \V. J. Holland, and A. S. Coggeshall. • 



INTRODUCTION. | 



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The necessity of some means of marking the passage of time must • 



early have impressed the minds of even primitive peoples. It is • 



impossible to clearly trace the evolution of chrononietric instruments, • 



but the passage of the sun across the heavens at comparatively regular | 



intervals doubtless gave the first impulse to their invention. The | 



earliest form was doubtless the sun-dial, not as we know it now, but i 



simply a stake driven into the ground, which measured time by the | 



shadow which it cast. It was called by the Greeks a gnomon (yvufxuv), I 



"the one who knows." The word dial, from the Latin dies, is more I 



familiar, gnomon now being used to designate that part of the sun-dial i 



which casts the shadow. As in the case of many other inventions, • 



that of the sun-dial is attributed to the Phoenicians. The first direct i 



> 



reference to it in literature is in Isaiah XXX-VIII, 8, which, in the I 



Revised Version, says: "Behold I will cause the shadow on the steps, i 



which is gone down on the dial of Ahaz with the sun, to return back- i 



ward ten steps; So the sun returned ten steps on the dial whereon it I 



was gone down." As chronologists assign the reign of Ahaz, King of i 



Judah, to the years 742-727 B. C, some idea of the antiquity of the i 



dial is given by this passage. The earliest dial of which we have an i 



accurate description is the hemicycle, or hemisphere, of the Chaldaean • 



astronomer, Berosus. This learned man, a priest of Bel, translated the • 



standard Babylonian work on astrology and astronomy into Greek. • 



The translation, which was completed in the reign of Antiochus II, i 



about the year 250 B. C, gives a full description of the dial. i 



Another very ancient method of determining the flight of time was i 



by means of the clepsydra or water-clock. The name is derived from • 



the Greek KkeiTTeLV, to steal, and u5cop, water, and refers to the grad- • 



4 I 



