On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass Part 1

On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compa.s.s.

by Derek J. de Solla Price.

_Ancestor of the mechanical clock has been thought by some to be the sundial. Actually these devices represent two different approaches to the problem of time-keeping. True ancestor of the clock is to be found among the highly complex astronomical machines which man has been building since h.e.l.lenic times to ill.u.s.trate the relative motions of the heavenly bodies._

_This study--its findings will be used in preparing the Museum's new hall on the history of time-keeping--traces this ancestry back through 2,000 years of history on three continents._

THE AUTHOR: _Derek J. de Solla Price wrote this paper while serving as consultant to the Museum of History and Technology of the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution's United States National Museum._

In each successive age this construction, having become lost, is, by the Sun's favour, again revealed to some one or other at his pleasure. (_Surya Siddhanta_, ed.

Burgess, xiii, 18-19.)

THE HISTORIES of the mechanical clock and the magnetic compa.s.s must be accounted amongst the most tortured of all our efforts to understand the origins of man's important inventions. Ignorance has too often been replaced by conjecture, and conjecture by misquotation and the false authority of "common knowledge" engendered by the repet.i.tion of legendary histories from one generation of textbooks to the next. In what follows, I can only hope that the adding of a strong new trail and the eradication of several false and weaker ones will lead us nearer to a balanced and integrated understanding of medieval invention and the intercultural transmission of ideas.

For the mechanical clock, perhaps the greatest hindrance has been its treatment within a self-contained "history of time measurement" in which sundials, water-clocks and similar devices a.s.sume the natural role of ancestors to the weight-driven escapement clock in the early 14th century.[1] This view must presume that a generally sophisticated knowledge of gearing antedates the invention of the clock and extends back to the Cla.s.sical period of Hero and Vitruvius and such authors well-known for their mechanical ingenuities.

Furthermore, even if one admits the use of clocklike gearing before the existence of the clock, it is still necessary to look for the independent inventions of the weight-drive and of the mechanical escapement. The first of these may seem comparatively trivial; anyone familiar with the raising of heavy loads by means of ropes and pulley could surely recognize the possibility of using such an arrangement in reverse as a source of steady power. Nevertheless, the use of this device is not recorded before its a.s.sociation with hydraulic and perpetual motion machines in the ma.n.u.scripts of Ri?wan, _ca._ 1200, and its use in a clock using such a perpetual motion wheel (mercury filled) as a clock escapement, in the astronomical codices of Alfonso the Wise, King of Castile, _ca._ 1272.

The second invention, that of the mechanical escapement, has presented one of the most tantalizing of problems. Without doubt, the crown and foliot type of escapement appears to be the first complicated mechanical invention known to the European Middle Ages; it heralds our whole age of machine-making. Yet no trace has been found either of a steady evolution of such escapements or of their invention in Europe, though the astronomical clock powered by a water wheel and governed by an escapement-like device had been elaborated in China for several centuries before the first appearance of our clocks. We must now rehea.r.s.e a revised story of the origin of the clock as it has been suggested by recent researches on the history of gearing and on Chinese and other astronomical machines. After this we shall for the first time present evidence to show that this story is curiously related to that of the _Perpetuum Mobile_, one of the great chimeras of science, that came from its medieval origin to play an important part in more recent developments of energetics and the foundations of thermodynamics.[2] It is a curious mixture, all the more so because, tangled inextricably in it, we shall find the most important and earliest references to the use of the magnetic compa.s.s in the West. It seems that in revising the histories of clockwork and the magnetic compa.s.s, these considerations of perpetual motion devices may provide some much needed evidence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 1.--FRAMEWORK STRUCTURE OF THE ASTRONOMICAL CLOCK of Giovanni de Dondi of Padua, A.D. 1364.]

Power and Motion Gearing

It may be readily accepted that the use of toothed wheels to transmit power or turn it through an angle was widespread in all cultures several centuries before the beginning of our era. Certainly, in cla.s.sical times they were already familiar to Archimedes (born 287 B.C.),[3] and in China actual examples of wheels and moulds for wheels dating from the 4th century B.C. have been preserved.[4] It might be remarked that these "machine" gear wheels are characterized by having a "round number"

of teeth (examples with 16, 24 and 40 teeth are known) and a shank with a square hole which fits without turning on a squared shaft. Another remarkable feature in these early gears is the use of ratchet-shaped teeth, sometimes even twisted helically so that the gears resemble worms intermes.h.i.+ng on parallel axles.[5] The existence of windmills and watermills testifies to the general familiarity, from cla.s.sical times and through the middle ages, with the use of gears to turn power through a right angle.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 2.--ASTRONOMICAL CLOCK of de Dondi, showing gearing on the dial for Mercury and escapement crown wheel. Each of the seven side walls of the structure shown in figure 1 was fitted with a dial.]

Granted, then, this use of gears, one must guard against any conclusion that the fine-mechanical use of gears to provide special ratios of angular movement was similarly general and widespread. It is customary to adduce here the evidence of the hodometer (taximeter) described by Vitruvius (1st century B.C.) and by Hero of Alexandria (1st century A.D.) and the ingenious automata also described by this latter author and his Islamic followers.[6] One may also cite the use of the reduction gear chain in power machinery as used in the geared windla.s.s of Archimedes and Hero.

Unfortunately, even the most complex automata described by Hero and by such authors as Ri?wan contain gearing in no more extensive context than as a means of transmitting action around a right angle. As for the windla.s.s and hodometer, they do, it is true, contain whole series of gears used in steps as a reduction mechanism, usually for an extraordinarily high ratio, but here the technical details are so etherial that one must doubt whether such devices were actually realized in practice. Thus Vitruvius writes of a wheel 4 feet in diameter and having 400 teeth being turned by a 1-toothed pinion on a cart axle, but it is very doubtful whether such small teeth, necessarily separated by about 3/8 inch, would have the requisite ruggedness. Again, Hero mentions a wheel of 30 teeth which, because of imperfections, might need only 20 turns of a single helix worm to turn it! Such statements behove caution and one must consider whether we have been misled by the 16th- and 17th-century editions of these authors, containing reconstructions now often cited as authoritative but then serving as working diagrams for practical use in that age when the clock was already a familiar and complex mechanism. At all events, even if one admits without substantial evidence that such gear reduction devices were familiar from h.e.l.lenistic times onwards, they can hardly serve as more than very distant ancestors of the earliest mechanical clocks.

Mechanical Clocks

Before proceeding to a discussion of the controversial evidence which may be used to bridge this gap between the first use of gears and the fully-developed mechanical clock we must examine the other side of this gap. Recent research on the history of early mechanical clocks has demonstrated certain peculiarities most relevant to our present argument.

THE EUROPEAN TRADITION

If one is to establish a _terminus ante quem_ for the appearance of the mechanical clock in Europe, it would appear that 1364 is a most reasonable date. At that time we have the very full mechanical and historical material concerning the horological masterpiece built by Giovanni de Dondi of Padua,[7] and probably started as early as 1348. It might well be possible to set a date a few decades earlier, but in general as one proceeds backwards from this point, the evidence becomes increasingly fragmentary and uncertain. The greatest source of doubt arises from the confusion between sundials, water-clocks, hand-struck time bells, and mechanical clocks, all of which are covered by the term _horologium_ and its vernacular equivalents.

Temporarily postponing the consideration of evidence prior to _ca._ 1350, we may take Giovanni de Dondi as a starting point and trace a virtually unbroken lineage from his time to the present day. One may follow the spread of clocks through Europe, from large towns to small ones, from the richer cathedrals and abbeys to the less wealthy churches.[8] There is the transition from the tower clocks--showpieces of great inst.i.tutions--to the simple chamber clock designed for domestic use and to the smaller portable clocks and still smaller and more portable pocket watches. In mechanical refinement a similar continuity may be noted, so that one sees the c.u.mulative effect of the introduction of the spring drive (_ca._ 1475), pendulum control (_ca._ 1650), and the anchor escapement (_ca._ 1680). The transition from de Dondi to the modern chronometer is indeed basically continuous, and though much research needs to be done on special topics, it has an historical unity and seems to conform for the most part to the general pattern of steady mechanical improvement found elsewhere in the history of technology.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 3.--GERMAN WALL CLOCK, PROBABLY ABOUT 1450, showing the degeneration in complexity from that of de Dondi's clock.]

Most remarkable however is the earliest period of this seemingly steady evolution. Side by side with the advances made in the earliest period extending for less than two centuries from the time of de Dondi one may see a spectacular process of degeneration or devolution. Not only is de Dondi's the earliest clock of which we have a full and trustworthy account, it is also far more complicated than any other (see figs. 1, 2) until comparatively modern times! Moreover, it was not an exceptional freak. There were others like it, and one cannot therefore reject as accidental this process of degeneration that occurs at the very beginning of the certain history of the mechanical clock in Europe.

On the basis of such evidence I have suggested elsewhere[9] that the clock is "nought but a fallen angel from the world of astronomy." The first great clocks of medieval Europe were designed as astronomical showpieces, full of complicated gearing and dials to show the motions of the Sun, Moon and planets, to exhibit eclipses, and to carry through the involved computations of the ecclesiastical calendar. As such they were comparable to the orreries of the 18th century and to modern planetariums; that they also showed the time and rang it on bells was almost incidental to their main function. One must not neglect, too, that it was in their glorification of the rationality of the cosmos that they had their greatest effect. Through milleniums of civilization, man's understanding of celestial phenomena had been the very pinnacle of his intellect, and then as now popular exhibition of this sort was just as necessary, as striking, and as impressive. One does not have to go far to see how the paraphernalia of these early great astronomical clocks had great influence on philosophers and theologians and on poets such as Dante.

It is the thesis of this part of my argument that the ordinary time-telling clock is no affiliate of the other simple time-telling devices such as sundials, sand gla.s.ses and the elementary water clocks.

Rather it should be considered as a degenerate branch from the main stem of mechanized astronomical devices (I shall call them protoclocks), a stem which can boast a continuous history filling the gap between the appearance of simple gearing and the complications of de Dondi. We shall return to the discussion of this main stem after a.n.a.lyzing the very recently discovered parallel stem from medieval China, which reproduced the same evolution of mechanized astronomical devices and incidental time telling. Of the greatest significance, this stem reveals the crucial independent invention of a mechanical escapement, a feature not found in the European stem in spite of centuries of intensive historical research and effort.

THE CHINESE TRADITION

For this section I am privileged to draw upon a thrilling research project carried out in 1956 at the University of Cambridge by a team consisting of Dr. Joseph Needham, Dr. w.a.n.g Ling, and myself.[10] In the course of this work we translated and commented on a series of texts most of which had not hitherto been made available in a Western tongue and, though well known in China, had not been recognized as important for their horological content. The key text with which we started was the "Hsin I Hsiang Fa Yao," or "New Design for a (mechanized) Armillary (sphere) and (celestial) Globe," written by Su Sung in A.D. 1090. The very full historical and technical description in this text enabled us to establish a glossary and basic understanding of the mechanism that later enabled us to interpret a whole series of similar, though less extensive texts, giving a history of prior development of such devices going back to the introduction of this type of escapement by I-Hsing and Liang Ling-tsan, in A.D. 725, and to what seems to be the original of all these Chinese astronomical machines, that built by Chang Heng _ca._ A.D. 130. Filling the gaps between these landmarks are several other similar texts, giving ample evidence that the Chinese development is continuous and, at least from Chang Heng onwards, largely independent of any transmissions from the West.

So far as we can see, the beginning of the chain in China (as indeed in the West) was the making of simple static models of the celestial sphere. An armillary sphere was used to represent the chief imaginary circles (_e.g._, equator, ecliptic, meridians, etc.), or a solid celestial globe on which such circles could be drawn, together with the constellations of the fixed stars. The whole apparatus was then mounted so that it was free to revolve about its polar axis and another ring or a casing was added, external and fixed, to represent the horizon that provided a datum for the rising and setting of the Sun and the stars.

In the next stage, reached very soon after this, the rotation of the model was arranged to proceed automatically instead of by hand. This was done, we believe, by using a slowly revolving wheel powered by dripping water and turning the model through a reduction mechanism, probably involving gears or, more reasonably, a single large gear turned by a trip lever. It did not matter much that the time-keeping properties were poor in the long run; the model moved "by itself" and the great wonder was that it agreed with the observed heavens "like the two halves of a tally."

In the next, and essential, stage the turning of the water wheel was regulated by an "escapement" mechanism consisting of a weighbridge and trip levers so arranged that the wheel was held in check, scoop by scoop, while each scoop was filled by the dripping water, then released by the weighbridge and allowed to rotate until checked again by the trip-lever arrangement. Its action was similar to that of the anchor escapement, though its period of repose was much longer than its period of motion and, of course, its time-keeping properties were controlled not only by the mechanics of the device but also by the rate of flow of the dripping water.

The Chinese escapement may justifiably be regarded as a missing link, just halfway between the elementary clepsydra with its steady flow of water and the mechanical escapement in which time is counted by chopping its flow into cycles of action, repeated indefinitely and counted by a c.u.mulating device. With its characteristic of saving up energy for a considerable period (about 15 minutes) before letting it go in one powerful action, the Chinese escapement was particularly suited to the driving of jackwork and other demonstration devices requiring much energy but only intermittent activity.

In its final form, as built by Su Sung after many trials and improvements, the Chinese "astronomical clock-tower" must have been a most impressive object. It had the form of a tower about 30 feet high, surmounted by an observation platform covered with a light roof (see fig. 4). On the platform was an armillary sphere designed for observing the heavens. It was turned by the clockwork so as to follow the diurnal rotation and thus avoid the distressing computations caused by the change of coordinates necessary when fixed alt-azimuth instruments were used. Below the platform was an enclosed chamber containing the automatically rotated celestial globe which so wonderfully agreed with the heavens. Below this, on the front of the tower was a miniature paG.o.da with five tiers; on each tier was a doorway through which, at due moment, appeared jacks who rang bells, clanged gongs, beat drums, and held tablets to announce the arrival of each hour, each quarter (they used 100 of them to the day) and each watch of the night. Within the tower was concealed the mechanism; it consisted mainly of a central vertical shaft providing power for the sphere, globe, and jackwheels, and a horizontal shaft geared to the vertical one and carrying the great water wheel which seemed to set itself magically in motion at every quarter. In addition to all this were the levers of the escapement mechanism and a pair of norias by which, once each day, the water used was pumped from a sump at the bottom to a reservoir at the top, whence it descended to work the wheel by means of a constant level tank and several channels.

There were many offshoots and developments of this main stem of Chinese horology. We are told, for example, that often mercury and occasionally sand were used to replace the water, which frequently froze in winter in spite of the application of lighted braziers to the interior of the machines. Then again, the astronomical models and the jackwork were themselves subject to gradual improvement: at the time of I-Hsing, for example, special attention was paid to the demarcation of ecliptic as well as the normal equatorial coordinates; this was clearly an influx from h.e.l.lenistic-Islamic astronomy, in which the relatively sophisticated planetary mathematics had forced this change not otherwise noted in China.

By the time of the Jesuits, this current of Chinese horology, long since utterly destroyed by the perils of wars, storms, and governmental reforms, had quite been forgotten. Matteo Ricci's clocks, those gifts that aroused so much more interest than European theological teachings, were obviously something quite new to the 16th-century Chinese scholars; so much so that they were dubbed with a quite new name, "self-sounding bells," a direct translation of the word "clock" (_glokke_). In view of the fact that the medieval Chinese escapement may have been the basis of European horology, it is a curious twist of fate that the high regard of the Chinese for European clocks should have prompted them to open their doors, previously so carefully and for so long kept closed against the foreign barbarians.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 4.--ASTRONOMICAL CLOCK TOWER OF SU SUNG in K'ai-feng, _ca._ A.D. 1090, from an original drawing by John Christiansen. (_Courtesy of Cambridge University Press._)]

Mechanized Astronomical Models

Now that we have seen the manner in which mechanized astronomical models developed in China, we can detect a similar line running from h.e.l.lenistic time, through India and Islam to the medieval Europe that inherited their learning. There are many differences, notably because of the especial development of that peculiar characteristic of the West, mathematical astronomy, conditioned by the almost accidental conflux of Babylonian arithmetical methods with those of Greek geometry. However, the lines are surprisingly similar, with the exception only of the crucial invention of the escapement, a feature which seems to be replaced by the influx of ideas connected with perpetual motion wheels.

h.e.l.lENISTIC PERIOD

Most interesting and frequently cited is the bronze planetarium said to have been made by Archimedes and described in a tantalisingly fragmentary fas.h.i.+on by Cicero and by later authors. Because of its importance as a prototype, we give the most relevant pa.s.sages in full.[11]

Cicero's descriptions of Archimedes' planetarium are (italics supplied):

Gaius Sulpicius Gallus ... at a time when ... he happened to be at the house of Marcus Marcellus, his colleague in the consuls.h.i.+p [166 B.C.], ordered the celestial globe to be brought out which the grandfather of Marcellus had carried off from Syracuse, when that very rich and beautiful city was taken [212 B.C.].... Though I had heard this globe (sphaerae) mentioned quite frequently on account of the fame of Archimedes, when I saw it I did not particularly admire it; for that other celestial globe, also constructed by Archimedes, which the same Marcellus placed in the temple of Virtue, is more beautiful as well as more widely known among the people. But when Gallus began to give a very learned explanation of the device, I concluded that the famous Sicilian had been endowed with greater genius than one would imagine possible for human being to possess. For Gallus told us that the other kind of celestial globe, which was solid and contained no hollow s.p.a.ce, was a very early invention, the first one of that kind having been constructed by Thales of Miletus, and later marked by Eudoxus of Cnidus--a disciple of Plato, it was claimed--with constellations and stars which are fixed in the sky. He also said that many years later Aratus ... had described it in verse.... But this newer kind of globe, he said, on which were delineated the motions of the sun and moon and of those five stars which are called wanderers, or, as we might say, rovers [_i. e._, the five planets], contained more than could be shown on the solid globe, and the invention of Archimedes deserved special admiration because he had thought out a way to represent accurately by a single device for turning the globe, those various and divergent movements with their different rates of speed. And when Gallus moved [_i.e._, set in motion] the globe, it was actually true that the moon was always as many revolutions behind the sun on the _bronze_ contrivance as would agree with the number of days it was behind in the sky. Thus the same eclipse of the sun happened on the globe as would actually happen, and the moon came to the point where the shadow of the earth was at the very time when the sun (appeared?) out of the region ... [several pages are missing in the ma.n.u.script; there is only one].

_De republica_, I, xiv (21-22), Keyes' translation.