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Thus, I slowly wound each weight up to the top of the clock and prepared to set the hands to the correct time. I immediately realized I had a problem – I was without a watch, cell phone, or iPod in the Tea Room and had no way off knowing what time to set the clock to. After traipsing downstairs to find the time I got to wondering: before we all had digital clocks telling us the time every second of everyday to extreme accuracy, how did one reset their clock if it happened to stop?

With that I set out to learn some of the history of clocks, a study referred to as Horology.

One of the earliest methods of time keeping was the sundial, or simply observing the position of the sun in the sky. For many years, even in advanced societies, the sun remained the most accessible and easy way to measure time. However, with the advent of the railway age, communities increasingly far apart could conduct business with one another and the numerous different ways communities kept time became problematic.

Most communities operated off of their own unique “Local Solar Time” estimate, which of course gave every community their own particular conception of “noon” based upon their position on the globe. Time was derived from local sunrises and sunsets, which varied from place to place. Clearly this was an ineffective system for intercommunity commerce as the time in each community varied. The problem would not be solved until the late 19th century, when time zones were developed.

The pendulum clock was invented in 1656 by Christiaan Huygens, but this clock was still set based on estimates like Local Solar Time. Despite the fact this was a highly subjective system, pendulum clocks greatly increased the accuracy of time keeping.

Where previous clocks would lose up to 15 minutes a day, Huygens style of clock lost only about 15 seconds a day. These clocks employ a pendulum, or swinging weight, as the time keeping mechanism. They work more accurately because a pendulum is a harmonic oscillator, meaning the weight swings back and forth in a precise time interval dependent on its length and resists swinging at other rates.
While the pendulum clock had many benefits, it also had some downfalls.

They could not be used in travel, because for the mechanism to function the clock needed to be stationary. Furthermore, the clock must be on a level surface or it will keep improper time. A clock owner would be able to tell if their clock was off balance by the uneven ticking noise the clock makes. Wide, long swings of the pendulum also proved to make the clock inaccurate, so eventually the anchor escapement was developed, which reduced the swing of the pendulum to between 4 and 6 degrees off center. As a result, clocks were developed with longer, slower pendulums which needed less power and caused less wear on the mechanism.

This new form of clock encased the pendulum in long wooden cases, forming Grandfather clocks. An example of a Grandfather clock can be found in the museums parlour display.

As clocks became more advanced, the minute hand was developed. Previously clocks had only an hour hand, and really, people of that time had little use for a more precise measure.

Minutes were not used in the common vernacular. Time was discussed as half past, quarter to, etc. and if time was told by the sun, this information was often absent. Thus, what I found from my study of clocks is that a precise conception of time is not as important as it is now.

People did not even speak as if it was. If your clock stopped, you would likely use a generalization of the time to reset it. People lived by the sun more so that they did by the clock.
The clocks at the Historical Museum all have minute hands and are of the pendulum variety. The clock in the Tea Room that led me to this investigation of time keeping was made by the Ansonia Clock Company. This company was a subsidiary of the Ansonia Brass Company and two clock makers out of Bristol, Connecticut.

In 1886, the approximate sale time of this 30 hour clock, the company boasted 225 styles of clocks. A google search for Ansonia clocks gives you an example of some of the spectacular clocks that the company made. Our museums most intricately designed clock was made by the WM L Gilbert Clock Co of Winstead, Connecticut.

It is called a Gingerbread Clock and can be found on the main floor. Make sure to stop by the museum and check out the amazing clocks we have on display.

Interesting Fact: The most accurate clocks we have today are atomic clocks which are not expected to lose more than a second in many millions of years.

by Historical Society

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