Clocks

A brief article on clockwork timepieces.

To make a clock wheel (a gear inside a clock), you need to be able to accurately mark out the teeth of the wheel for cutting.

Al-Jazari's book describes in detail fifty devices, which are grouped into six categories: ten water and candle clocks; ten vessels and figures suited for drinking sessions; ten pitchers and basins for phlebotomy and washing before prayers; ten fountains that change their shape alternately, and machines for the perpetual flute; five water raising machines; and five miscellaneous devices. This article discusses the history of water clocks in general, and those addressed in Al-Jazari's writing in particular.

A database of drawings and graphics of mechanical devices from Renaissance and late medieval sources.

The earliest alarm clock I found reference to is a German iron wall clock with a bronze bell, probably made in Nuremberg in the 15th century.

On the early history of the clockmakers and their trade.

The Museum, part of the University of Bologna's Department of Astronomy, houses a collection of astrolabes, gnomons & sundials, clocks, astronomical quadrants, telescopes, armillary spheres, globes, maps, and other mathematical, meteorologic, topographic and nautical instruments.

A series of engravings that bring to us the very clear representation of the crafts and technology of his time, and the relative importance which these discoveries and inventions had in the mind of a well-informed layman of the 16th century.

New Discoveries includes illustrations of: The Lodestone, The Magnet; The Astrolabe; America; Gunpowder; Printing Books; Iron Clocks; Guaiacum (a New World remedy for syphilis); Distillation; Silk, or the Silkworm; Stirrups, or Foot Rests; the Watermill; the Winged Mill (windmills); Olive Oil; Sugar; Oil Colors (oil-painting); Spectacles (eyeglasses); Longitudes of the Earth Found from the Deviation of the Magnet from the Pole; Polishing Armor; Engraving on Copper; and the travels & discoveries of Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, and Ferdinand Magellan.