188 A SHORT HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



near Naples in Italy, who first poised the needle on a pivot 

 instead of a card floating on water, as had been the custom 

 before his time. (See page 164.) 



CLOCKS. Clocks with wheels seem to have come into occa- 

 sional use from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, and one of 

 the first is said to have been sent by the Sultan of Egypt in 

 1232 to the Emperor Frederick II. 



It resembled a celestial globe, in which the sun, moon and planets 

 moved, being impelled by weights and wheels so that they pointed 

 out the hour, day and night, with certainty. 



Another is mentioned as in Canterbury cathedral, while still an- 

 other at St. Albans, made by R. Wallingford who was abbot there 

 in 1326, is said to have been so notable "that all Europe could not 

 produce such another." It remained for Huygens in the seven- 

 teenth century to apply pendulums to clocks. 



WOOL AND SILK. TEXTILES IN THE MIDDLE AGES. As an 

 example of the industrial history of the times the following account 

 of conditions in Spain is given : 



The cloth manufactures in Spain continued to be of the coarsest 

 character until after the marriage of Catharine of Lancaster to the 

 heir of Castile (1388) when finer cloths were manufactured and 

 improved methods adopted. Up to that time the cloths used by 

 people of the higher class came from Bruges, from London, and from 

 Montpellier. James II of Aragon the sovereign of Barcelona, 

 where there were at the time hundreds of looms at work making a 

 coarse woolen wished to send a present to the Sultan of Egypt 

 (1314 and 1322), and chose green cloths from Chalons and red cloths 

 from Rheims and Douai, but sent no Spanish stuff ; while the stew- 

 ard's accounts of Fernando V show that all his household were dressed 

 in garments of imported stuffs. The great centre for the sale of wool 

 was at Medina del Campo, and the cloth factories of Segovia and 

 Toledo were the most active and celebrated in Castile, while those 

 of Barcelona were the principal in the east of Spain. It is asserted 

 that the improvement in the qualities of the Spanish cloth after 

 the coming of the Plantagenet princess to Spain was partly owing 

 to the fact that some herds of English sheep formed part of her 



