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81
Contributions from
The Museum of History and Technology:
Paper 6
On the Origin of Clockwork,
Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass
Derek J. de Solla Price
| POWER AND MOTION GEARING | 83 |
| MECHANICAL CLOCKS | 84 |
| PERPETUAL MOTION AND THE CLOCK BEFORE DE DONDI | 108 |
| THE MAGNETIC COMPASS AS A FELLOW-TRAVELER FROM CHINA | 110 |
82
ON THE ORIGIN OF CLOCKWORK,
PERPETUAL MOTION DEVICES
AND THE COMPASS
By Derek J. de Solla Price
Ancestor of the mechanical clock has been thoughtby some to be the sundial. Actually these devicesrepresent two different approaches to the problem oftime-keeping. True ancestor of the clock is to be foundamong the highly complex astronomical machineswhich man has been building since Hellenic times toillustrate the relative motions of the heavenly bodies. This study—its findings will be used in preparingthe Museum's new hall on the history of time-keeping—tracesthis ancestry back through 2,000 years of historyon three continents. The Author: Derek J. de Solla Price wrote thispaper while serving as consultant to the Museum ofHistory and Technology of the Smithsonian Institution'sUnited 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 hispleasure. (Sūrya Siddhānta, ed. Burgess, xiii,18-19.)
HE histories of the mechanical clock and themagnetic compass must be accounted amongstthe most tortured of all our efforts to understand theorigins of man's important inventions. Ignorancehas too often been replaced by conjecture, and conjectureby misquotation and the false authorityof "common knowledge" engendered by the repetitionof legendary histories from one generation oftextbooks to the next. In what follows, I can onlyhope that the adding of a strong new trail and theeradication of several false and weaker ones will leadus nearer to a balanced and integrated understandingof medieval invention and the intercultural transmissionof ideas.
For the mechanical clock, perhaps the greatesthindrance has been its treatment within a self-contained"history of time measurement" in whichsundials, water-clocks and similar devices assumethe natural role of ancestors to the weight-drivenescapement clock in the early 14th century....