WallClock History

WallClock - History of WallClocks

In the history there are mentions of refering to time on a wallclock. Amazingly, the oldest working wallclock were in public squares where the wallclock were mounted on top of the vertical square based spires, so that people could see the time standing anywhere in the city. This was possible because other than a religious building and the palace, there hardly used be any tall building that could obstruct the city square wallclock from view. Wallclocks did not come into being just like that. There is long history spanning hundreds of years for our modern wallclock which you can buy in the market or online and thousands of years history behind the wallclock hanging on the wall in your home.
  

Shadow WallClock History

The history of Shadow Clocks shows that they were not actually wallclock. These clock were made Egyptians by marking the shadow of an object or a vertical structure falling on the ground or on a wall. They probably were marked using an already existing clock for caliberation. There after, people could just look at the shadow and know what hour is it. But the draw back was that the shadow wallclock could not give accurate time. It merely showed approximate hours and no minutes.
  

History of SunDial WallClock

In the history, Sundials were used by the greeks. This was a more advanced shadow wallclock. In this there is a vertical object whose shadow falls on a flat circular stone which had the approximate hours marked on it. The hour markings usually started from 4 am through 12 noon till 8 pm. After 8 pm till 4 am or so  it is usually dark hours and sun is also asleep in the night. So sundials could not be used at night and thtey wanted to come up with a new technology.
  

 

Water WallClock History

According to the history, Water Wallclocks actually existed in the distant past some time in 4000 BC. Unfortunately a wallclock could keep time not only by day but even at night and was called the Clepsydra. Although the water wallclock was a big achievement at that time, the technology was simple. Hang a leaking bucket of water on the wall and using another clock, mark the level of water every minute or hour as you wish. For 24 hours you may need a very large bucket of water with the smallest hole possible. This wallclock technology had some flaws. The water drains off faster when the bucket is full and slows down when the bucket is almost empty. Further, the water wallclock would be effected by the temperature of the place that changes the viscousity of water and thus the flow rate at different places, heights where atmospheric pressure and temperatures are different. They even came up with even better inventions like candle wallclock, incence wallclock and many more designs and ideas. But none stood the test of time except one called hourglass.
  

Hour Glass WallClock History

History proves beyond doubt that the inherent problems of water wallclock was solved using Sand WallClock called the HourGlass. Hourglass uses finely ground sand that smoothly flows down from the upper wine glass to the lower wine glass through a metered hole. This was an amazing invention. The time the sand lasted was usually an hour and hence the name hourglass. There was nothing to do when the sand ran out. Just invert the hourglass and the next hour starts. This invention is still used in some parts of the world. But the invention stayed in the mind of humans refusing to get erased even today. The microsoft used the hourglass next to the arrow cursor in the earlier versions of Windows operating system. But usually the hourglass indicated a slow computing and the hour glass got associated with a slow computer performance or a comptuer freeze up and thus you do not see the hourglass anymore with the cursor arrow. But hourglass cursor is still available as an option if you want to use it again. 
  

Mechanical WallClock History

A mechanical WallClock is a clock that displays time on an analog clock face using an hour needle, minutes needle and optionally a seconds needle. As seen in the history, Mechanical Wallclock was first seen in the 1200 to 1300 AD. The concept of mechanical clock was a great invention and portrayed the intellegence of human beings in understanding time and its value. Mechanical wallclocks were mounted on top of city square towers. There were 4 wallclocks on the square tower. Each wall facing the four direction had one wallclock each with its own individual clock movement mechinary. In some city square towers all 4 wallclocks had a common clock movement with levers and gears connecting the hour, minute and seconds needles connected to the common clock movement.(What is Clock Movement?)  Amazingly the mechanical clock movement needs a power source to run it heavy machinery. For this the old time engineers used the power of running water or lifted large weights on cables and allowed the gravity to pull the weights down slowly which powered the mechanical clock movement. The needles displaying the hour and minutes were huge in size and weight so that people can view the time standing many miles away from the square wallclock which were decorated with ancient metal art. Some of these decorated square wallclock still survive even today and some of them still work. But it is an engineering challenge to maintain accurate time on them and keep them well oiled and running.
  

Spring & Pendulum WallClock History

The Wallclock advancement continued as per the history available on the subject and engineers started using steel springs which you can tightly wind and then the spring will progressively unwind to power a Pendulum that would swing under gravity to keep time. But this also had its flaw because the pendulum would start elongating with increasing temperature. The pendulum swinging time is dependent on the length of the pendulum. So if the pendulum elongates then the swing time increases and the wallclock will slow down. Thus they built in a mechanism to reduce the length of the pendulum mechanically.
  

Ship's Chronometer WallClock History

The problem in a ship was that the ship keeps rolling left and right and pitching up and down continuously with the sea. So a pendulum clock was as good as useless in a ship because the pendulum will keep hitting the inner sides of the wallclock and damate itself or stop. The engineers then came up with a hair spring powered clock that did not need any pendulum and even added counter wieghts on all moving parts to counter the ship's roll and pitch. Thus the history of wallclock on the ship's bulkheads started. The ship's require highly accurate wallclock that would not lose more than 10 seconds in a month or so because the navigation was completely based on accurate time and many ships had collided due to this reason. A gentleman called Harrison created a choronograph in 1735 and continued to test it and improve it for 30 more years. Finally, his son tested the chronometer wallclock for ships. The chronometer lost only about 5 seconds in 10 weeks. This was accepted by the shipping world and survived until a decade back when modern technology brough about digital time keeping and thus ended the golden era of WallClock.
  

WallClock At Your Home

Today, Wallclocks are just decorative pieces on the walls of your home. No one really understands the history behind these great invention which kept time since time immorial. WallClock refuses to die and that is why you still have a couple of wallclock at your home. Even your mechanical wrist watch is mostly a chronometer. Wallclock elevates the asthetics of your home. Mostly you find a round wallclock in most homes. A decorated square wallclock is rare and that is what prompted me to make this decorated square wallclock with a graphite frame, a golden digital clock inside the wallclock dial and the hour as well as the seconds needles look like neon lights.
  

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