Talk:History of timekeeping devices

Precision vs. accuracy

At several points, this article mentions precision and/or accuracy of timekeeping in such a way as to suggest that the two are being confused for one another. It's important not to mistake precision for accuracy, even though it's easy to do that (not to mention difficult to prove it). For example, saying that something is 243.209347 seconds (or metres, or whatever) is precise, but it may not be accurate.

Thus, it would be good to specify, for example, how accuracy of timekeeping was improved, and keep that separate from precision (e.g., dividing time into smaller units).

--Piledhigheranddeeper (talk) 18:56, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Pulsars

I think this article should make at least passing references to pulsars as they are among the most precise oscillators in nature and some come close to competing with atomic clocks in terms of accuracy. Jason Quinn (talk) 20:10, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't exactly call them "devices", though. GeeJo ^(t)⁄_(c) • 20:58, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

True, but a telescope observing the rotation rate of a pulsar is as much a timekeeping device as a sundial observing the rotation rate of the Earth. Splat (talk) 22:45, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Telescopes don't "observe", and neither do sundials. Whoever is using the telescope or sundial makes the observations. A "timekeeping device" could no doubt be constructed based on observations of pulsars, but a telescope just ain't it. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 23:08, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Point taken. Nevertheless, pulsars have been used to keep track of time to an accuracy within an order of magnitude of atomic clocks (see this citation). That seems to merit a mention in this article. Splat (talk) 23:32, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

You could certainly build a clock whose calibration is based upon pulsars. How is such a clock anything less a time-keeping device compared to one based on the Cesium atom? Both just use regular periodic oscillations in nature. The word "device" refers to a clock itself, not the physical foundations for it. Regardless, my original intent for mentioning pulsars is that it is a possible alternative basis for time-keeping and I think important enough to warrant a sentence or two such that it alerts the reader to the topic's existence so they could pursue it further if they wish. Jason Quinn (talk) 23:40, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

There are many physical phenomena that could be used as the basis of a timekeeping device, but until they are I don't see their relevance to an article on the history of timekeeping devices. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 23:43, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Indian timekeeping

This article completely ignores the contributions to time keeping from the cultures native to the Indian sub-continent. For example, the Jantar Mantar complex in New Delhi, India (ca. early 18 c.) is an excellent example of the advances of timekeeping and astronomy in this region. There are further examples in earlier literature (some dating into BCE) that indicate a culture well versed with the measurement of time. May I suggest a slightly broader perspective that is inclusive of all regions of the world rather than a narrow focus on just contributions from the supposed "classical world"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.164.122.118 (talk) 09:32, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Electric clocks

It is odd that the article makes only the shortest reference, in passing, to electric clocks, which were central in the timekeeping of the first half of the twentieth century. The Wikipedia already contains several articles on this topic: electric clock, Telechron, Hammond Clock Company, and perhaps others. Wissembourg (talk) 22:10, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Stonehenge etc.

In the section "Early Timekeeping Devices" it says "Stone circles, such as England's Stonehenge, were built in various parts of the world, especially in Prehistoric Europe, to time and predict seasonal and annual events such as equinoxes or solstices." As there are no written records from these times we can only surmise what these stone alignments were used for, so it would be more accurate to say something about the celestial alignment and say that "this has lead many researchers to believe that they may have been used to predict annual events such as equinoxes and solstices". In fact, the online reference says "but its alignments show its purposes apparently included the determination of seasonal or celestial events" - which say to me "it appears that was the purpose." not that we know it was the purpose. Richerman (talk) 13:27, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Escapement

The invention of mechanical clocks by the Chinese is a myth which rests on a, say, very optimistic interpretation of their escapement mechanism. We do not need to rewrite history that the true escapement mechanism for mechanical clocks was invented in medieval Europe. Ricardo Duchesne: “Asia First?”, The Journal of the Historical Society, Vol. 6, No. 1 (March 2006), pp. 69-91 (77-79):

None of what Hobson says, however, addresses Landes’s carefully weighted opposition to Needham, which is detailed in his book, Revolution in Time (1983). Chinese horology never got beyond the principle called clepsydra, which is the measurement of time by the continuous flow of water. What the Sung Chinese did was to bring to its culmination the water-clock line of horological development. The Europeans, on the other hand, started a whole new line of clock technology based on a true mechanical or kinematic principle of measurement. The escapement by itself is not the key. Since there is so much confusion about this difference, and not just from Hobson, it is worth citing Landes’s explanation of the different principles of operation as explained in his Revolution in Time:

Both techniques used escapements, but these have only the name in common. The Chinese one worked intermittently; the European, in discrete but continuous beats. Both systems used gravity as the prime mover, but the action was very different. In the mechanical clock, the falling weight exerted a continuous and even force on the train, which the escapement alternately held back and released at a rhythm constrained by the controller. Ingeniously, the very force that turned the scape wheel then slowed it and pushed it part of the way back . . . In other words, a unidirectional force produced a self-reversing action— about one step back for three steps forward. In the Chinese timekeeper, however, the force exerted varied, the weight in each successive bucket building until sufficient to tip the release and lift the stop that held the wheel in place. This allowed the wheel to turn some ten degrees and bring the next bucket under the stream of water while the stop fell back . . . In the Chinese clock, then unidirectional force produced unidirectional motion.

Landes knows that early mechanical clocks were less accurate than the Chinese water-wheel clocks. The important difference is that, by Sung times, water clock techniques had “come about as far as they could, whereas the mechanical clock marked the beginning of a new technology.” Water-clock technology is intrinsically limited by many destabilizing factors, such as corrosion and dirt, or the temperature of the water. The mechanical clock is inherently capable of far greater precision and has far greater developmental possibilities. If Needham thinks the Chinese escapement can be seen as an anticipation or precedent of the mechanical escapement, the historical reality is that after the invention of a few astronomical water clocks in the Tang and Sung era, Chinese horology stagnated and then retrogressed. Needham imagines that this escapement device was transmitted to Europeans but says that “the details of any transmission are still obscure,” and Landes convincingly argues that no historical source has so far been discovered showing any clear transmission. Besides, if true, this transmission would still not explain the invention of a clock that measured time, not according to the continuous flow of water, but as a regular, repeating sequence of discrete actions. Nor does it explain the rapid spread of this new mechanical device, and indeed the “relentless pressure to improve technique and design,” from the first crude mechanical clocks which kept time so imperfectly that they had to be continually adjusted, to the spectacular improvement in precision Christian Huygens (1656) achieved by replacing the balance-wheel regulator with a pendulum, and so on in cumulative succession.

I am going to change the article accordingly. Has anybody checked the Arab claim of "weight-driven clocks"? That is a strongly misleading claim, too, because the weights of these clocks was actually water! By that creative reasoning already the earliest Egyptian water clocks were weight driven.....Gun Powder Ma (talk) 23:55, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

The section on the so-called Muslim mechanical clocks is bogus. It totally misrepresents its main source which, in fact, does not credit the Arabs for mechanical clocks, but only for certain components of mechanical clocks. I could not find not a single instance where the author explicitly claims a Muslim invention of mechanical clocks. But see for yourself: http://www.history-science-technology.com/Articles/articles%2071.htm Gun Powder Ma (talk) 00:11, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Brilliant quote. Yi Xing, Zhang Sixun, and Su Song still need to be mentioned as employing the escapement mechanism, yet it should be stressed that the Chinese escapement was driven by the motion of liquid power, and not by a sequence of purely mechanical actions as seen in European clockworks soon after.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 18:04, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Yet, wasn't this painfully obvious already with the description of a waterwheel and clepsydra tank in Su's clock tower?--Pericles of Athens^Talk 18:05, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I've left a message for Jagged85 regarding this discussion (he added the edits, I believe). · AndonicO ^Engage. 11:33, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for inviting me to the discussion. The cited article explicitly states that Arabic engineers employed weight-drives in their mercury clocks. Jagged 85 (talk) 18:08, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Where does it? I post a whole excerpt, but you just repeat your point and remove the tag. This is not the first time you 'worked' that way. Ahmad Y al-Hassan & Donald R. Hill: “Islamic Technology”, Cambridge 1986, ISBN 0 521 422396, Water-clocks and mechanical clocks, pp.55-59, make the first explicit mention of Islamic mechanical clocks for the first time in connection with Taqi al-Din (16th c.). Gun Powder Ma (talk) 23:00, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I cleared up the old section, consisting of dubious quotes taken out of context from online websites, and wrote a new section based on reliable print sources. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 03:01, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Where did I say "mechanical clocks"? I said that their mercury clocks had weight-drives... the quote you posted above didn't even address the mercury clock. Please carefully read what I say before throwing around accusations, but I guess this is not the first time you 'worked' that way either. Either way, I'm glad you did finally get around to addressing the mercury clock in the article itself, so cheers to that. Jagged 85 (talk) 01:54, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Global Positioning System

Does the GPS section really belong here? GPS is a positioning system, not primarily a timekeeping system. While it may include sophisticated clock-synchronisation methods, that alone doesn't mean it should be included here. As has previously been mentioned, NTP isn't included either.

Perhaps we should have a section called Clock synchronisation (with link to main article Clock synchronization) that briefly describes the general requirement for clock sync, with a brief mention of NTP and GPS as examples. Mitch Ames (talk) 03:20, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

GPS is the standard clock for many systems requiring high absolute accuracy, so I would support its inclusion. The low cost and high quality are a silent revolution in many ways. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 16:42, 24 July 2014 (UTC).

New text about Persian clocks - degrading Featured Article status

User:Maahmaah has added some paragraphs about the history of clocks in Persia. Whilst added in good faith, I do not feel that they are of an appropriate quality for Wikipedia, and certainly not for a featured article. (Maahmaah is not a native English speaker and I do not mean any disrespect to him.) I've had a go at cleaning up the text, but it's still not great. It is not helped by the fact that the only cited source is in the Persian language. Can anyone help to address this issue before I take it to WP:FAR? Thanks, Bazonka (talk) 20:22, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Wristwatches - too definite?

From the current version of the article:

In 1904, Alberto Santos-Dumont, an early aviator, asked his friend, a French watchmaker called Louis Cartier, to design a watch that could be useful during his flights. The wristwatch had already been invented by Patek Philippe, in 1868, but only as a "lady’s bracelet watch", intended as jewelry. As pocket watches were unsuitable, Louis Cartier created the Santos wristwatch, the first man's wristwatch and the first designed for practical use.

This claim appears in various forms over a handful of pages, but I am not sure it's accurate. The Santos wristwatch may have been the first successful man's wristwatch, but it certainly wasn't the first designed for practical use - as I write this, I'm looking at an 1898 publication (from Calcutta, so it was presumably mainstream by the time it got there) showing a "wristlet" watch explicitly advertised to cyclists as a functional item. This may need rephrasing a little. Andrew Gray (talk) 23:02, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

HIST406 Wikipedia article critique

This article is one of the best Wikipedia articles I have seen in quite some time. The introduction provides a very nice and short summery of a long article, which is a feat in of itself. The table of contents is very well organized and makes it extremely easy to find what is needed. Each section contains a fully fleshed out history of time-keeping instruments from the time period it represents. Everything is organized in chronological order and flows very nicely from example to example. Furthermore, the article includes dozens of very detailed and varied pictures of all kinds of clocks, every single one of them relevant and helpful. If I had to name a flaw for this article, it's that despite being very well organized, it is still extremely long and splitting it into several different articles should be considered. In particular, more than a small portion of the article is dedicated to very specific types of clocks that may be considered material for stand alone articles as opposed to being a part of one huge article. The references appear to be credible and I did not find any missing footnotes, so no problems there. All in all a very well written and strong article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by HIST406-13sdehart (talk • contribs) 21:58, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Numerous errors and omissions

Just at a cursory glance, this article has numerous factual errors and omissions of important points; it should probably be removed from Featured Article status until these are corrected.

• "Water clocks, or clepsydrae, were commonly used in Ancient Greece following their introduction by Plato..." Anaxagorus and Empedocles mention clepsydrae, long before Plato 1.
• The section on "Mechanical clocks" combines and conflates water clocks and all-mechanical verge and foliot clocks, and sluffs over the most important advance in timekeeping technology in 1000 years, the invention of the verge escapement in the late 13th century, which enabled the change in timekeeping technology from continuous to oscillatory processes, used in all modern clocks. All clocks in this section prior to the late 1200s (besides Gregory's) were liquid clocks.
• "Clock towers in Western Europe in the Middle Ages were also sometimes striking clocks." Early tower clocks were always striking clocks, that's why they were put in towers, so they could be heard at a distance.
• "The longcase clock (also known as the grandfather clock) was first created to house the pendulum and works by the English clockmaker William Clement in 1670 or 1671; this became feasible after Clement invented the anchor escapement mechanism in about 1670." Although some sources credit Clement, most agree Robert Hooke invented the anchor in 1658 2, 3, 4. Clement didn't sell longcase clocks until 1680.
• "To avoid the need for a very large case, most clocks using the verge escapement had a short pendulum." That was only freestanding clocks, plenty of wall-mounted verge clocks had long pendulums. They were called "Wag-on-the-wall" clocks.
• The "Pendulum clock" and "Pocketwatch" sections don't mention why the pendulum and sprung balance wheel improved accuracy so much; they were the first harmonic oscillators applied to timekeeping. This was the second most important advance in timekeeping in 1000 years, and the article totally misses it. All modern clocks use harmonic oscillators.
• Temperature-compensated pendulums are not mentioned. These enabled the construction of regulator clocks accurate enough to be used for celestial navigation, and to meet the demands of the Industrial Revolution.
• The "Equation clock" section doesn't clearly state the reason for this complication; it was not to "...[satisfy] the demand for clocks that always agreed with sundials" but to facilitate setting the clock by celestial observations of the sun or stars, which was the only way to set a clock before accurate time standards.

--Chetvorno^TALK 04:16, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

• "Thomas Woods writes: (...) The first recorded clock was built by the future Pope Sylvester II for the German town of Magdeburg, around the year 996." What kind of clock? A clock or an astronomical instrument? Thietmar of Merseburg 6, 61: [Gerbertus] in Magadaburg orologium fecit, illud recte constituens, considerata per fistulam quadam stella nautarum duce ([Gebert] ... at Magdeburg ... built an orologium, positioning it correctly, after he had observed through a tube the star that sailors use for guidance). Pilot Pirx (talk) 19:11, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Ancient Egypt = the history of the Civil War?

Immediately under the heading "Ancient Egypt", it states "See also: History of the civil war", with a link to the article on the American Civil War. Nothing else under that heading has anything to do with the American Civil War, so I'm at a loss to understand why it's referenced there. Can anyone explain? Occam's Shaver (talk) 06:54, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

WP:ERA

Well, that's a little bizarre. Usually I sort BCE/BC issues out by looking for the earliest system but the article started out as a mess using both systems. The earlier discussions got buried in the archive but Here User:AndonicO, Grimhelm, and J-stan all supported BC/AD and only Keilana and Edmund Patrick didn't (albeit Keilana was rather forceful in reverting other users to her preference); here, same people, same deal; and here, Bibliomaniac15 and Zginder supported BC/AD and a consensus was reached. For what it's worth, I also support BC/AD as Keilana and Edmund Patrick's arguments are completely off: it's not any less religious and not any less biased and just as based on (incorrect) computations of Jesus's conception/birth/lunar phase whichever form is used.

Since the consensus has been reached, though, kindly maintain it consistently and revert or adjust well-meaning editors who don't notice the article's house style. — LlywelynII 08:42, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

it is important to keep consensus and I have always been happy with that. As a non believer of deities and totally prepared to accept my own responsibility for my own actions I have no problem with AD / BC, but as a museum professional who working with peoples whose calendar is not even in "my" 21st century, before common era or before christian era and common / christian era is time specific and acknowledges that it is an imposed time scale which has become the international norm. It is less religious as it does not in one version use the word christian. it is biased as through human development it has become the international recognised method of measuring time. It is I agree based on incorrect computations but that is what we have to live with. A simple link would solve the problem, and it is a shame that after a brief scan of the article at no point is BC wikilinked to BC which it should once as an encyclopedia and once linked to BCE. If in the UK you are learning about time and time measurement in Key Stage 2 you may have come across BC (one would hope so but still no way to learn what it actually stands for) and if like my sons they were taught using BCE well this article offers no help what so ever! Edmund Patrick – confer 10:06, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm glad that you agree with one of the foundational principles of the encyclopedia you're reading and (hopefully) working on.

The rest of your paragraph doesn't seem to make any sense. If your children don't know one of the most common abbreviations in the English language, that's really on you. All the moreso if you're actually "a museum professional" who presumably shares his love of history with the other loves of his life.

I'm not saying I can't link the BC article. I think we should. I'm just saying ten edits in, someone will come along and whinge about WP:OVERLINK and claim that it's somehow unhelpful to use hyperlinks on an encyclopedia whose sole reason for existence is their helpfulness. — LlywelynII 00:44, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Being that I have used this article as an example for a RFC here is the link: User_talk:Edmund_Patrick#AD_.2F_CE_-_BC_.2F_BCE_Suggestion, first discussion here: Wikipedia:Bot_requests#AD_.2F_CE_-_BC_.2F_BCE_Suggestion. Thanks Edmund Patrick – confer 10:29, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Those links are dead and discussion of this article and changes to it should happen here on the article's talk page. — LlywelynII 00:39, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

As they would be as not permalinks Edmund Patrick – confer 08:33, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

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Update to the hourglass section

Although the history of the hourglass may not be precisely known, it doesn't seem to have been used in China before the mid 16th century, and as Needham said in Science and Civilization, an hourglass implies the use of glassblowing, since it would be difficult to get an "hourglass" shape in without it. Glassblowing was not commonly done by the Chinese, thereby implying an European origin for the hourglass, although Needham himself does not specifically state that, but he does reference a source, Wang Chen-To, which does state that Chinese obtained the hourglass from the Dutch or Portuguese. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.111.162.10 (talk) 20:54, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

FA in need of review

While this older FA is an impressive effort, particularly if we consider that it was promoted way back in 2008, I think that there are a number of significant issues here that have to be addressed so it can meet the current FA criteria. For instance:

• In this talk page, I see a number of threads commenting on the innacuracy of the article, (Numerous errors and omissions, Update to the hourglass section, and others), that have not been addressed and makes one wonder if the article is being actively watched and maintained (also the 2-month-old banner asking for a merge with no response till date);
• The lead is exceedingly long;
• There are several unsourced sentences in the text, and some subsections are completely unsourced (Clock towers, Equation clock);
• Failed verification in some links consulted, bringing up concerns of WP:OR in the article:

• There's no mention of Joseph Windmills in 1
• The same source 1 does not support any of the following: George Graham who invented the deadbeat escapement, orrery and mercury pendulum - there's even no mention of orrery or mercury pendulum there;
• In the "Spiral-hairspring watch" subsection, there's no mention of Hooke or harmonic oscilator in the source.

Article needs work. RetiredDuke (talk) 13:34, 27 March 2021 (UTC)