114 



HOROLOGY.* 



Iliflory. 



Toothed 

 wheels ap- 

 plied to 

 clepsydrae 



Tick's 

 clock, 



1'LATE 



CCC. 

 Fig. 1. 



Clocks 

 made by 

 Pacificus 

 od Ger- 

 bert. 



Richard of 

 Waling- 

 .ford's clock. 



HonoLOf.Y is the art of constructing machines for mea- 

 suring time. The word is derived from the Greek 

 *fl{Aoyii, (through the iMt'm horologium,) compounded 

 of ufx, an liotir, and >.iyw, to read or point out ; hence 

 {Ayiir, a machine for indicating the hours of the day. 



Long before sun-dials were invented, clepsydrx, or 

 water clocks, had been made in the most remote 

 period* of antiquity, and were used in Asia, China, In- 

 dia, Chaldea, Egypt, and Greece, where Plato intro- 

 duced them. Julius Caesar found them even in Britain, 

 when he carried his arms thither ; and it was by them 

 he observed, that the nights in this climate were shorter 

 than those in Italy : (See his Commentaries, lib. v. xiii.) 

 Toothed wheels, although known a considerable time 

 before, were first applied to clepsydra by Ctesibius, a na- 

 tive of Alexandria, who lived 14-0 years before the Chris- 

 tian era. At what time, or by whom, was invented the 

 clock with toothed wheels, crown wheel 'scapement, and 

 the regulator in the form of a cross suspended by a cord 

 with two weights to shift on it, can now only be guess- 

 ed at, as no positive information on this subject has 

 been handed down to us. It was this kind of clock, a 

 large turret one, which Charles V. king of France, sur- 

 named the Wise, caused to be made at Paris by Henry 

 Vick, who was sent for from Germany for the express 

 purpose, and which was put up in the tower of his pa- 

 lace about the year 1370. Julien le Roy, who had seen 

 this clock, has given some account of it in his edition 

 of Sully 's Rei>le Arti/icielle du Temps, Paris 1737: (See 

 Plate CCC. Fig. 1. and the Description of the Plates at 

 the end of the volume.) Before a clock could be brought 

 even to the state of the one made by Vick, there must 

 have been many alterations and progressive improve- 

 ments upon that which had first been projected, so that 

 it must have been invented at least two or three cen- 

 turies before Vick's time. As the same word for a sun- 

 dial among the Greeks and Romans was also that for 

 a clock, disputes have arisen, whether the horologia 

 of Pacificus and of Gerbert were sun-dials or clocks. 

 Father Alexander asserts that the horologium of Ger- 

 bert was a clock; while Hamberger supposes it to have 

 been a sun-dial, from the pole star having been employ- 

 ed in setting it. Pacificus was archdeacon of Verona 

 about the year 850. Gerbert was pope, under the name 

 of Silvester II. and made his clock at Magdeburg, about 

 the year 996. 



Richard of Walingfbrd, abbot of St AJbans in Eng- 

 land, who flourished in 1326, by a miracle of art con- 

 structed a clock, which had not its equal in all Europe, 

 according to the testimony of Gesner, Leland too, an 

 old English author, informs us, that it was a clock which 

 shewed the course of the sun, moon, and stars, and the 

 rise and fall of the tides; that it continued to go in his own 

 time, which was about the latter end of Henry the 

 Seventh's reign ; and that, according to tradition, this 

 famous piece of mechanism was called Albion by the 

 inventor. 



" In 1382," says Father Alexander, " the Duke of 

 Burgundy ordered to be taken away from the city of 

 Coin-tray, a clock which struck the hours, and which 

 was one of the best known at that time, either on this 

 side or beyond seas, and made it be brought to Dijon, 



History. 



his capital, where it still is in the tower of Notre Dame. 

 These are the three most ancient clocks that I find, after 

 that of Gerbert." 



" We know no person," continues this author, "more Herbert's, 

 ancient, and to whom we can more justly attribute the in- clock, 

 vention of clocks with toothed wheels, than to Gerbert. 

 He was born in Auvergne, and was a monk in the ab- 

 bey of St Gerard d'Orillac, of the order of Saint Bennet. 

 His abbot sent him into Spain, where he learned astro- 

 logy and the mathematics, in which he became so great 

 a master, that, in an age when these sciences were little 

 known, he passed for a magician, t as well as the Ab- 

 bot Trithemius. From Spain he came to Rome, where 

 he received the abbacy of Bobio in Italy, founded by 

 Saint Columbus ; but the poor state of its funds com- 

 pelled him to return to France. The reputation of 

 his learning and uncommon genius, induced Adal- 

 beron, Archbishop of Rheims, to establish him, in 970, 

 as rector of the schools there, and at the same time to 

 make him his private secretary. It was near the end 

 of the tenth century, about the yar 99o', when he made 

 at Magdeburg this clock, so wonderful and surprising, 

 by means of weights and wheels. He was Archbishop 

 of Rheims in 992, a situation which he held during three 

 years then archbishop of Ravenna in 997, and at last 

 sovereign pontiff, under the name of Silvester II. in 

 999 ; and he died at the beginning of the fifth year of 

 his pontificate, in 1003." The clock constructed by 

 Gerbert seems to have been made after he left Rheims, 

 and before his appointment to Ravenna; and it is high- 

 ly probable, that this was the period when clock-making 

 was introduced into Germany. 



" William Marlot," continues the same author, " to 

 show how wonderful this piece of work was, makes use 

 of an expression which can hardly be suffered in our 

 language : Admirabile horologium jabricavit, per tnstru- 

 mentum diabolica arle inventiim." 



Since toothed wheels had been known above 1300 

 years before Gerbert is said to have made his horologi- 

 um, and above 1 1 00 after they had been applied to the 

 clepsydra, and as they were also sculptured on "Tra- 

 jan's column at Rome, where they are still to be seen, 

 there seems to be nothing unaccountable in Gerbert's 

 having fallen on the way of applying wheels to make 

 a clock different from the clepsydrae, which had been 

 long in use. Besides, Father Alexander seems to have 

 investigated the history of horology more profoundly 

 and indefatigably than Hamberger ; and Gerbert may 

 have made use of the pole star, for other purposes than 

 merely to set a sun-dial by it, and probably for the pur- 

 pose of drawing a meridian line, in order to regulate 

 his clock. If it were a sun-dial, as some suppose, why- 

 does Marlot, who wrote at Rheims in 1679, consider it 

 as such a wonder, since it appears from our History of 

 DIALLING, that dials were well known, and in com- 

 mon use, 1600 years before Gerbert's time? Hamber- 

 ger, however, admits, that the clock was invented in 

 the eleventh century ; and he thinks it probable, that 

 we are indebted to the Saracens for it. Now Ger- 

 bert's clock was made near the commencement of the 

 same century. The college in Spain, where he had 

 been instructed, had Arabians or Saracens among its 



* The Editor is indebted to Mr THOMIS UEID for the following article on HOHOLOCV. 

 f It may have been for a crime of tliis kiad that he was afterwards banished from France. 



