The Ancient Greek Water Clock That Kept the Most Accurate Time for 1,800 Years

Today, we’re sur­round­ed by tech­nolo­gies we could jus­ti­fi­ably picture arsenic clip thieves. In ancient Greece, those who want­ed to cognize wherever their clip was going con­sult­ed a instrumentality they called a “water thief.” The roots of the clep­sy­dra, aliases h2o clock, spell backmost arsenic acold arsenic the six­teenth cen­tu­ry BC, pinch evi­dence of specified devices recovered successful mod­ern-day Iraq, Iran, and Egypt, and much ambigu­ous evi­dence unearthed successful places for illustration India and Chi­na. The mech­a­nism successful the ear­li­est exam­ples takes not overmuch much com­plex a shape than a vessel retired of which h2o slow­ly drips, albeit not astatine a reg­u­lar pace. That nat­ur­al imped­i­ment to hydraulic time­keep­ing was­n’t cor­rect­ed until the 3rd cen­tu­ry BC, erstwhile a Greek inven­tor called Cte­si­bius group astir mak­ing his ain improve­ments.

Cte­si­bius’ auto­mat­ic h2o timepiece utilized a ver­ti­cal cylin­der, rotat­ing erstwhile year­ly, marked pinch consecutive ver­ti­cal lines rep­re­sent­ing the months of the twelvemonth and curved hor­i­zon­tal lines rep­re­sent­ing the hours of the day. A point­er adjacent to it indi­cat­ed the cur­rent hour, its posi­tion changed by the h2o lev­el of the cylin­der successful which it float­ed. That cylin­der was filled done a feed­ing reser­voir, itself con­stant­ly sup­plied pinch water.

The thought down this arrange­ment was to support the complaint of travel steady, and frankincense the velocity of the point­er con­stant. To emp­ty the reser­voir with­out the request for quality inter­ven­tion, Cte­si­bius incor­po­rat­ed a siphon that fto h2o retired each 24 hours, reset­ting the clock­’s dai­ly cycle. A h2o instrumentality attached to a sim­ple sys­tem of gears kept the cylin­der turn­ing, truthful that its “dis­play” could support up pinch the ever-chang­ing magnitude of the day­light-based ancient Greek hour.

All this is explained pinch elaborate visu­al immunodeficiency successful the ani­mat­ed Decon­struct­ed video above. “In a world with­out elec­tric­i­ty, dig­i­tal log­ic, aliases moreover mechan­i­cal clocks,” says its nar­ra­tor, “this ancient inven­tion laid the foun­da­tion for automa­tion and time­keep­ing arsenic we cognize them today.” Indeed, Cte­si­bius’ clep­sy­dra “kept bet­ter clip than any­thing other connected Earth for 1800 years,” until Chris­ti­aan Huy­gens invent­ed the pen­du­lum timepiece successful 1656. There’s some­thing successful the swing­ing of specified a mech­a­nism that appeals to the innate quality attrac­tion to rhythm, and the metaphor­i­cal val­ue of the grains of soil pass­ing done an hour­glass (an inter­me­di­ary inven­tion betwixt Cte­si­bius and Huy­gens) remains beardown moreover now. But it’s prob­a­bly not a coin­ci­dence that the travel of clip and the travel of water, astatine slightest from the quality per­spec­tive, consciousness for illustration 2 aspects of the aforesaid pri­mal phe­nom­e­non.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Plan­e­tar­i­um Table Clock: Mag­nif­i­cent 1775 Time­piece Tracks the Pass­ing of Time & the Trav­el of the Plan­ets

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Antikythera Mech­a­nism: The World’s First Ana­log Com­put­er from Ancient Greece

The Advanced Tech­nol­o­gy of Ancient Rome: Auto­mat­ic Doors, Water Clocks, Vend­ing Machines & More

How Medieval Islam­ic Engi­neer­ing Brought Water to the Alham­bra

Ancient Egypt­ian Pyra­mids May Have Been Built pinch Water: A New Study Explore the Use of Hydraulic Lifts

How Clocks Changed Human­i­ty For­ev­er, Mak­ing Us Mas­ters and Slaves of Time

Based successful Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts connected cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the writer of the newslet­ter Books connected Cities as good arsenic the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him connected the societal net­work for­mer­ly known arsenic Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.