History of watches: how the first watches appeared. Mechanical watches: history of inventions

The history of watches may have deeper roots than is commonly believed today, when attempts to invent watches are associated with the birth of civilization in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, which led to the emergence of its constant companions - religion and bureaucracy. This led to the need for people to organize their time more efficiently, which is why the first clocks appeared on the banks of the Nile. But the history of clocks probably dates back to when primitive people somehow tried to mark time, for example, determining the hours for a successful hunt. And some still claim that they are able to determine the time of day by observing flowers. Their daily opening indicates certain hours of the day, so the dandelion opens around 4:00, and Lunar flower- only after dark. But the main instruments, before the invention of the first clock, with the help of which a person assessed the passage of time, were the sun, moon and stars.

All clocks, regardless of their type, must have a regular or repeating process (action) by which equal intervals of time can be marked. The first examples of such processes that satisfied the necessary requirements were both natural phenomena, such as the movement of the sun across the sky, and artificially created actions, such as the uniform burning of a lit candle or the pouring of sand from one reservoir to another. In addition, the watch must have a means of tracking changes in time and thus be able to display the result obtained. Therefore, the history of watches is the history of searching more and more consistent actions or processes that regulate the pace of the clock.

History of the sundial

One of the first to try to formalize the division of their day into clock-like periods of time were the ancient Egyptians. In 3500 BC, the first kind of clock appeared in Egypt - obelisks. These were slender, tapering upward, four-sided structures, the falling shadow from which allowed the Egyptians to divide the day into two parts, clearly indicating noon. Such obelisks are considered to be the first sundials. They also showed the longest and shortest day of the year, and a little later, markings appeared around the obelisks, which made it possible to mark not only the time before and after noon, but also other periods of the day.

Further developments in the design of the first sundial led to the invention of a more portable version. These first clocks appeared around 1500 BC. This device divided the sunny day into 10 parts, plus two so-called “twilight” periods of time, in the morning and evening hours. The peculiarity of such clocks was that they had to be moved at noon from the direction of the east to the opposite direction of the west.

The first sundial underwent further changes and improvements, becoming more and more complex designs, up to the use of a hemispherical dial in the watch. This is how the famous Roman architect and mechanic, Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, who lived in the first century BC, described the history of the appearance and design of 13 various types The first solar clock used in Greece, Asia Minor and Italy.

The history of sundials continued until the late Middle Ages, when window clocks became widespread, and in China the first sundials, equipped with a compass, began to appear for their correct installation relative to the cardinal points. Today, the history of the appearance of clocks using the movement of the sun is forever immortalized in one of the Egyptian obelisks that has survived to this day, a true witness to the history of clocks. It has a height of 34 meters and is located in Rome, on one of its squares.

Clepsydra and others

The first clocks, independent of the position of celestial bodies, were called clepsydras by the Greeks, from the Greek words: klepto - to hide and hydor - water. Such water clocks were based on the process of gradual flow of water from a narrow hole, and the elapsed time was determined by its level. The first clocks appeared around 1500 BC, which is confirmed by one of the examples of water clocks found in the tomb of Amenhotep I. Later, around 325 BC, similar devices began to be used by the Greeks.

The first water clocks were ceramic vessels with a small hole near the bottom from which water could drip at a constant rate, slowly filling another marked vessel. As the water gradually reaches different levels and marked the time intervals. Water clocks had an undoubted advantage over their solar counterparts, since they could be used at night and such clocks did not depend on climatic conditions.

The history of water clocks has another version, used in some areas of North Africa until today. This clock is a metal bowl with a bottom hole, which is placed in a container filled with water and begins to sink slowly and evenly, thereby measuring the time intervals until complete flooding. And although the first water clocks were rather primitive devices, their further development and improvement led to interesting results. This is how water clocks appeared that could open and close doors, showing small figures of people or moving pointers around the dial. Other clocks made bells and gongs ring.

The history of watches has not preserved the names of the creators of the first water clock; only Ctesibius of Alexandria is mentioned, who 150 years BC. e. tried to use it in clepsydras mechanical principles, based on the developments of Aristotle.

Hourglass

The well-known hourglass works on the principle of a water clock. When such first watches appeared, history is not known for certain. It is only clear that not before people learned to make glass - a necessary element for their production. There is speculation that the history of the hourglass began in the Senate ancient Rome, where they were used during speeches, marking equal periods of time for all speakers.

Liutprand, a monk who lived in the eighth century in Chartres, France, is considered to be the first inventor of the hourglass, although, as can be seen, this case does not take into account earlier evidence of the history of the clock. Such clocks became widespread in Europe only by the 15th century, as evidenced by written references to hourglasses found in ship logs of that time. The first mentions of hourglasses also indicate the great popularity of their use on ships, since the movement of the ship could not in any way affect the operation of the hourglass.

The use of granular materials such as sand in watches significantly increased their accuracy and reliability compared to clepsydra (water clocks), which, among other things, contributed to the hourglass's immunity to impact. temperature changes. Condensation did not form in them, as happened in water clocks. The history of the hourglass was not limited to the Middle Ages.

As demand for "time keeping" increased, the inexpensive to produce and therefore very accessible hourglasses continued to be used in a variety of applications and have lived to today. It is true that today hourglasses are made more for decorative purposes than for measuring time.

Mechanical watches

The Greek astronomer Andronikos supervised the construction of the Tower of the Winds in Athens in the first century BC. This octagonal structure combined a sundial and a mechanical device, which consisted of a mechanized clepsydra (water clock) and wind indicators, hence the name of the tower. This entire complex structure, in addition to time indicators, was capable of displaying the seasons of the year and astrological dates. The Romans, around the same time, also used mechanized water clocks, but the complexity of such combined devices, the forerunners of mechanical clocks, did not give them an advantage over the simpler clocks of the time.

As mentioned earlier, attempts to combine water clocks (clepsydras) with some kind of mechanism were successfully carried out in China in the period from 200 to 1300, resulting in mechanized astronomical (astrological) clocks. One of the most complex clock towers was built by the Chinese Su Sen in 1088. But all these inventions could not be called mechanical watches, but rather a symbiosis of a water or sundial with a mechanism. However, all the previous developments and inventions led to the creation of the mechanical watches that we still use today.

The history of completely mechanical watches begins in the 10th century (according to other sources, earlier). In Europe use mechanical mechanism for measuring time begins in the 13th century. The first such clocks functioned mainly using a system of weights and counterweights. As a rule, watches did not have the hands we are used to (or only had hour hands), but produced sound signals, caused by the striking of a bell or gong every hour or less that has passed. Thus, the first mechanical watches signaled the beginning of some event, such as a religious service.

The earliest inventors of clocks undoubtedly had some scientific inclinations, many of them being famous astronomers. But watch history also mentions jewelers, metalsmiths, blacksmiths, carpenters and joiners who contributed to the production and improvement of watches. Among the hundreds, if not thousands, of people who contributed to the development of mechanical clocks, three were outstanding: Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch scientist who was the first (1656) to use a pendulum to regulate the movement of a clock; Robert Hooke, an Englishman who invented the clock anchor in the 1670s; Peter Henlein, a simple mechanic from Germany who, at the turn of the 15th century, developed and used crucibles, which made it possible to make watches small sizes(the invention was called “Nuremberg eggs”). In addition, Huygens and Hooke are credited with the invention of spiral springs and the balancing wheel for watches.

The invention of mechanical watches is attributed to various individuals. In particular, the monk and mathematician Herbert of Aurillac (930-1003) is called the inventor of the clock, who introduced Arabic numerals and abacus counting in Europe. In M. Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita,” Woland calls him “a famous warlock.” And so it was. Herbert (later Pope Sylvester TT) knew more than his contemporaries, therefore, he was a warlock, for which he was apparently poisoned. Most likely, his watch was a water clock. During his trips to Spain, Herbert could get acquainted with the principle of operation and design of various Arab astronomical instruments and, above all, water clocks. It is absolutely certain that in the 6th century. The Arabs equipped their watches with a skillful mechanism, with the help of which a doll appeared on the dial every hour. But the water clock never showed exact time. Herbert was the author of a sundial made in 996 for the city of Magdeburg. However, not a single later source mentions that anyone began to develop Herbert’s ideas after his death.

Other individuals are also called inventors of mechanical watches. In any case, the designs of the first tower clocks were different. Over time, watches have become more complex. It can be considered that the invention and manufacture of watches contributed in a certain way to the development of mechanics. It is obvious, for example, that gear wheels have become so widespread in technology largely due to the invention of watches. The production of watches, even as large and imperfect as the first samples, required much more high precision manufacturing than all previous machines. They say that modern mechanical engineering is the brainchild of a “marriage” of the fine craftsmanship of a watchmaker with the heavy engineering technology used by the builders of water mills and other powerful engines.

The Chinese, from the beginning of our era, had clocks (or working astronomical models) that were driven by a water wheel. Some of them, created between 1088 and 1092, had a kind of release device that delayed the rotation of the wheel until each bucket was filled to the top, and then allowed it to turn at a certain angle. However, this device was not a real descent, since the rotation of the wheel was determined mainly by the flow of water. It was quite different from the balance and spindle escapement of European watches of the 14th century. There is no reliable evidence that Chinese inventions influenced the development of watch mechanisms in Europe, although such a possibility is not excluded.

In Europe, Villard de Goncourt described (around 1250) a crude trigger device that allowed the angel's fshurka to always point his hand towards the sun. But this again bears little resemblance to a spindle escapement.

The uniformity of the movement of a mechanical watch driven by a suspended weight depends on the escapement (“guard”), which interrupts the movement of the clock mechanism at certain intervals. The origins of this device are even murkier than those of the vast majority of medieval inventions.

Modern mechanical watches use a spring motor. In ancient clocks, the engine was a weight. And now there are still enough such hours. Many consider the well with a gate to be the prototype of the first clock. A gate is a shaft on which a rope is wound: one end of the rope is attached to the gate, and a bucket is tied to the other. By turning the handle, you lift the bucket of water. But as soon as you let go of the bucket that you just barely lifted, it will fly headlong down, unwinding the rope and causing the gate and handle to rotate at breakneck speed. It is possible that the well with a collar served as a model for the inventor of a clock with a weight. The bucket resembles a weight, and the rotating handle resembles an arrow.

To ensure uniform movement of the needle, a device was invented - a regulator. Such a regulator is found in all mechanical watches: both weight watches and spring watches.

The weight, when lowered, causes not only the shaft to rotate, but also the gear wheel connected to it. To slow down the rotation of this wheel, an axis with two blades is located next to it. One spatula gets caught at some point between two teeth of the wheel. The tooth that the spatula prevents from passing pushes it forward. This causes the axle to rotate half a turn, and the lower blade gets stuck between the other two teeth. And so that it is not so easy for the wheel to rotate the turntable, a beam with two weights is mounted on the upper end of the axle. By forcing the weight to rotate the turntable and even the beam with weights, you can ensure its slow and uniform lowering (with small pushes).

The first clocks, compared to modern ones, were very simply and crudely made, and therefore did not show the time very accurately. They had only one hand - the hour hand. They had to be wound several times a day, so the watchmaker had to live in the clock tower to monitor the mechanism. The numbers on the dial showed from 1 to 24, and not like now - up to 12. They struck one hour after sunset, and 24 at sunset the next day. In the old days, the beginning of the day was considered not midnight, as now, but the time of sunset. Later they began to mark the dial, repeating the numbers from 1 to 12 twice - for night and for day. But after a while they began to make clocks with the now familiar counting.

According to some documents, watches appeared in England around 1286, in France - around 1300, in Italy - around 1335. It is known that mechanical watches were first recorded in documents in 1320. However, these first watches known to us, by the way, contemporaries of Dante Alighieri (the tower clock is mentioned in the Divine Comedy) already represented an example of high skill: a rather complex mechanism reproduced the movement of the planets and the Moon. According to Lands, the mechanical clock was born around 1250. It was around this time that the first mention of the clockmaker's profession dates back to, and in the records of church expenses an item appears that provides for payment to a master repairing a tower clock. Initially, their role was limited to calling people to prayer with their strikes (what kind of hours are these without a strike?). The advent of mechanical watches caused major changes in people's lives.

The townspeople divided their day in Paris by church bells. Shoemakers, upholsterers, clothiers, and drapers finished their work at the first stroke of Vespers. The bakers baked bread until Matins. The carpenters finished their work with the first strike of the large bell of the Notre Dame Church. At eight o'clock in the evening in the summer and at seven o'clock in the winter the bells sounded the signal: turn off the lights. And everyone hastily put out the lamps and candles and went to bed.

The watches, about which only indirect information has reached us, were recognized masterpieces, a source of pride for churches and monasteries. Thus, the clock mechanism of Salisbury Cathedral, built in 1386, has survived to this day. It consists of two series of wheels driven by weights: one for indicating time, the other for striking. The oldest documents on mechanical watches, containing a description and a drawing, are published in eleven different manuscripts, one of which belongs to the creator of the watch, professor of astronomy and medicine Giovanni de Dondi from Padua. He completed the construction of the clock in 1364 after 16 years of labor.

One of the first tower clocks to appear was in England (1286). King Edward the First ordered big clock on Westminster Tower in London, above the Houses of Parliament. This is a high quadrangular tower with a pointed dome, which rises above all the surrounding buildings, like a giant above dwarfs. Three hundred and sixty steps lead up to Big Tom - that’s what the British called their first clock. For four centuries in a row, Big Tom beat the clock tirelessly. On foggy London days, the old tower, like a lighthouse in the middle of the sea, sent out its dull alarm signals in all directions. Then the place of Big Tom was taken by another clock - Big Ben.

Soon tower clocks appeared in other European cities. Charles the Fifth, King of France, ordered the watchmaker Henry de Vic from Burgundy, who was commissioned to install a clock on the tower of the royal palace in Paris. The master worked for eight years to build the clock. For the fact that he then looked after the clock, he was given a salary - six sous a day - and was allocated a room in the same tower where the clock was located.

A few years later, another master, the Frenchman Jean Juvans, built a clock for one of the royal castles. There is an inscription on them: “Charles the Fifth, King of France, installed me with the help of Jean Jouvans in the summer of one thousand three hundred and eightieth.” Jean Jouvans and Heinrich de Vic are a few of the first watchmakers whose names have come down to us.

Pocket watch

Around 1500, pocket watches finally appeared. They were invented by the watchmaker of the German city of Nuremberg, Peter Genlsin. They said that even as a boy he surprised everyone with his abilities. Indeed, the task was only possible for a very capable person.

The biggest difficulty was to replace the weights with some other motor. Peter Henlein adapted a spring for this purpose. In the depths of the pocket watch mechanism there is a round flat box made of brass. This is a “drum”, a house in which the watch’s motor, the spring, is placed. One end of the spring - the inner one - is motionless; it is attached to the axle on which the drum sits. The other - external - is attached to the drum wall. To wind the watch, you need to rotate the drum and thereby tighten the spring. As soon as we left the spring to its own devices, it begins to unfold, its outer tip returns to old place, and with it the drum makes the same number of revolutions back as it previously made forward. Several gears transmit the rotation of the drum to the hands - just like in a watch with a weight. In order to slow down the unfolding of the spring, Peter Henlein used approximately the same mechanism as was used in large watches.

There was only one arrow. There was no watch glass. There is a little bump above each number so that in the dark you can find out what time it is. The cones were also needed for this reason. In the old days, it was considered very impolite to look at your watch while visiting. If you look at the clock, the owners may think that you are tired of it. Therefore, when the guest was about to leave, he put his hand into the pocket of his camisole and quietly felt the arrow and the lump near which it stood. The first pocket watches did not have glass. It only appeared in early XVII V. At first, the watch head served only for hanging, and the watch was wound not with the head, but with a key.

The first pocket watches were called Nuremberg eggs, although in fact they were not shaped like an egg, but rather a round box. But very soon the watch began to be given the most various shapes. There were stars, and butterflies, and books, and hearts, and lilies, and acorns, and crosses, and death's heads. These watches were often decorated with miniature paintings, enamel, precious stones. Such beautiful toys It was a pity to hide them in a pocket, and so they began to wear them around the neck, on the chest and even on the stomach. Some dandies wore two watches - gold and silver, so that everyone could see how rich they were. Carrying a watch in your pocket was considered indecent.

Watchmakers performed their work so masterfully and skilfully that they managed to make very tiny watches that were worn as earrings or instead of a stone in a ring. The Queen of Denmark, who married King James the First of England, had a ring with a watch embedded in it. This watch struck time, but not with a bell, but with a small hammer that quietly struck the finger. It's amazing what wonderful things have hatched from rough Nuremberg eggs! How much art was needed to make such a ring! After all, at that time all work was done by hand.

Now that watches are made by machine, craftsmen only have to assemble individual parts made by machines. They have at their disposal all kinds of lathes, gear cutting machines, etc. It’s no wonder that watches are now cheap and accessible to everyone. But 400-500 years ago, making watches that were more or less good was not easy, and watches were very expensive.

Pocket watches with strikes were not always convenient. They struck every half hour, and their ringing, they say, interfered with conversation. It is possible that this is why they fell out of use. Later, two English watchmakers succeeded in making a watch that struck only when the crown was pressed.

Particularly prized were the “rehearsal clocks” by the famous Breguet (Abraham Louis Breguet), originally from Switzerland. When you press the head, an unusually melodic ringing is heard. Small hammers strike first the hours, then the quarters and finally the minutes. Involuntarily it begins to seem to you that this quiet, sad ringing is coming from somewhere in another country, from the bell towers of a fairy-tale city, from which you are separated only by a golden clock cover.

Louis Breguet (sometimes spelled Breguet) (1747-1823), one of the representatives of the famous French family, was an outstanding watchmaker. For his skill and great merits in improving watch mechanisms, he was elected a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences. Breguet created the best chronometers of his time and a number of precision physical devices. Its opening hours are described by A.S. Pushkin in "Eugene Onegin"

The modern mechanism for winding watches and moving hands was invented only in 1835 by the Parisian watchmaker Raymond Berto.

Main Moscow clock

Old Moscow also had its own Big Tom - the clock on the Spasskaya Tower in the Kremlin. The first Moscow watch was made by the monk Lazar Serbin in 1404 by order of Prince Vladimir Dmitrievich, son of Dmitry Donskoy. This monk arrived in Moscow from Athos, where there were several Orthodox monasteries who spread Byzantine culture among the Slavs. The clock was installed on one of the towers of the white-stone Kremlin, not far from the place where the Annunciation Cathedral is now located. They were arranged in a special way. Usually the hand of a watch rotates, but the dial remains motionless. Here it was the other way around: the dial rotated, but the hand remained motionless. And the hand was outlandish: in the form of a small sun with rays, which was mounted on the wall above the dial. To top it all off, the dial indicated not twelve hours, as usual, but seventeen. How did Muscovites calculate time using such strange clocks?

We find the answer to this in the notes of travelers. Here is what the traveler Meyerberg writes about the clock of the Spasskaya Tower:

“They show the hours of the day from sunrise to sunset... Russians divide the day into twenty-four hours, but they count the hours by the presence or absence of the sun, so that when it rises, the clock strikes one, then continues to strike until sunset. After this, they begin counting from the first hour of the night until the day begins... When the days are the longest, the clock shows and strikes until seventeen, and then the night lasts seven hours.”

That's how difficult it was to count time back then! It’s no wonder that the watch required constant supervision. When the watchmaker who lived in the tower was tipsy, the clock showed the wrong time, confusing the merchants in the shopping arcades and the clerks in the administrative offices. At night, when the clock on the Spasskaya Tower struck, knocking and ringing began throughout the city.

“On every street,” says Meyerberg, “watchmen are posted, who every night, recognizing the time by the striking of the clock, knock the same number of times on the gutters or on the boards, so that this knock would let the scoundrels staggering at night know about their vigilance.”

Lazar Serbin's watch for a long time were the only ones not only in Moscow, but throughout Rus'. In 1435, a clock appeared in Veliky Novgorod. Somewhat later, in 1476, a clock was installed in the Svyatogorsk monastery in the city of Pskov. The oldest clock that has come down to us - the clock of the Solovetsky Monastery - was made in 1539 by the Novgorod master Semyon Chasovik. The mechanism made by Semyon Chasovik was iron and forged.

A clock was installed on the Spasskaya Tower (formerly Frolovskaya) in 1625, when the English master Christopher Golovey built it with a tent, Bin/three of which housed the clock mechanism. Russian craftsmen also took part in the work: Pomeranian peasants Zhdan, his son Shumilo Zhdanov and grandson Alexey Shumilov.

In 1702, Peter I purchased three tower clocks from Holland, one of which was delivered to Moscow. In 1706, they were installed on the Spasskaya tower and put into use by the blacksmith Nikifor Yakovlev. The watch had a 12-hour dial. Initially, the chimes played the melody of the anthem “How Glorious...”. From 1706 to 1815, this clock was repeatedly repaired by Russian masters Semyon Ivanov, Yakov Lebedev and others.

In 1851-1852 The worn-out mechanism was dismantled and the Butenop brothers company installed a new watch in its place. Four dials and minute hands appeared, and the mechanism began to have four winding shafts. The clock has worked safely for almost a century and a half and continues to measure Moscow time. The diameter of the dials is 6.2 m, the length of the minute hands is 3.27 m, the hour hands are 2.97 m. The mass of each hand is about 60 kg, and the mass of the entire mechanism is 25 tons. Previously there were 33 bells, now there are 10.

The Kremlin chimes sounded on the air for the first time on February 20, 1926. Before that, for almost two years, clock bells from the tower of Westminster Abbey in London sounded on the radio.

I. P. Kulibin and his watch

The brilliant Russian inventor and designer Ivan Petrovich Kulibin (1735-1818) made a clock in the form of a goose egg that struck the hours, halves and quarters. Every hour, doors opened in the middle of the egg. Small figures appeared in the depths. After the performance, the chimes played and the doors closed.

Ivan Petrovich Kulibin had a lot wonderful inventions. Crowds of people flocked to the Tauride Garden in St. Petersburg to look at the exhibition there. large model Kulibinsky single-arch bridge, which was supposed to connect both banks of the Neva with one huge arc. And the Kulibin semaphore telegraph was, along with the telegraph of the Frenchman Chappe, one of the most successful attempts to build, as they said then, a “long-range warning machine.”

His “machine ship,” which moved against the current under the influence of the force of the current itself, brilliantly passed the test on both the Neva and the Volga. The skiff with two oarsmen could barely keep up with the “engine ship”, which was carrying a cargo of four thousand pounds.

The only thing that Kulibin managed to accomplish in his entire long life was a few toys, plus mirrored lanterns for carriages and a device for opening windows in the palace corridors.

If Kulibin had been born somewhere in America or England, he would now be as famous throughout the world as Fulypon and Arkwright. But Kulibin was born and raised under serfdom.

Pendulum and clock

It seemed to Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) that the swinging of the lamp in the cathedral always continued for the same amount of time. Gradually the swings became smaller and smaller until the lamps calmed down completely, but even with a smaller swing the swinging time was the same. He determined the time by pulse beats. Galileo later tested his observation. He noticed that all pendulums - weights on a string - swing at the same time if the length of the string is the same. The shorter the thread, the less time each swing lasted. You can make such a pendulum, each swing of which - to the right and to the left - will last exactly a second. To do this, the thread should be about a meter long. As a result of these observations (1583-1595), Galileo concluded that accurate clocks could be made. It would be necessary to adapt the pendulum to the clock, to make sure that the pendulum regulates the clock. However, neither Galileo nor his eldest son succeeded in building such a clock.

This problem was solved by 1656 by another famous Dutch scientist, Christian Huygens (1629-1695), a mechanic, physicist and mathematician. He most likely received information about the work of Galileo and his son from his father, Constantin Huygens, who was the Dutch ambassador to France. At the same time, Galileo's son was in Paris.

The construction of a wall clock with a pendulum is not at all that difficult. The body contains a weight and a drum on which a rope is wound. The gear wheel rotates along with the drum. This first wheel rotates a small gear, and with it the hour wheel, which sits on the same axis. This wheel is called a sentry wheel because it has a hour hand. The hour wheel rotates the second gear, and with it the running wheel. This device was known even before Galileo and Huygens. The difference is that there is no spinner and balancer, but instead there is another device that holds the running wheel and prevents the weight from descending too quickly. At the top above the running wheel there is a curved plate resembling an anchor. It's called an anchor. The anchor constantly swings along with the pendulum, which is suspended behind the mechanism. Let's assume that the left hook of the anchor is stuck between the teeth of the road wheel. It will stop for a moment. But now the weight will do its job and force the running wheel to push away the hook that is interfering with it. From this push, the hook will rise and miss one tooth of the wheel. But from the same push, the pendulum will swing to the left, and the right hook of the anchor will drop and again stop the road wheel.

They were invented by a watchmaker from the German city of Nuremberg. Peter Henlein.

He replaced weights in his mechanism with a spring. A spring, no matter how you twist it, always tends to unwind. I took advantage of this property Peter Henlein. There is a mechanism inside the pocket watch. It has a flat box - this is a house in which the spring is located. One end of it, the inner one, is motionless. The other - external - is attached to the wall of the house or drum.

When a mechanical watch is wound, the barrel is rotated and the spring is twisted, the outer tip making circles. As soon as the spring is twisted, it begins to unwind and gradually returns to its original place.

Gears transmit rotation to the clock hands. In pocket watches invented Henlein, there was only one arrow. There was no glass at all. And above each number there was a tubercle - so you could determine by touch what time it was. After all, in the old days it was considered extremely impolite to look at the clock while, for example, visiting. Therefore, when the guest was about to leave, he felt for the watch in the pocket of his jacket and determined the time.

The minute hand appeared on clocks around 1700. And the second - after another sixty years. Why? In the old days, there was no need to accurately measure time, so clocks with one hand made do. But the years passed. Trade developed. The ships set sail. Roads were built between cities. Manufactories opened in cities. Life became more and more hurried and businesslike. People have learned to value their time.

In the 18th century, a minute hand appeared on the clock, and later a second hand.

Watch glass appeared only in the 17th century. The pocket watch was wound with a key.

The first pocket watch were called "Nuremberg eggs", although in fact they looked little like eggs. They had round boxes. Then they began to give the clocks the most bizarre shapes. There were clocks in the form of butterflies, stars, hearts, acorns, crosses and more.

The most complex and interesting mechanism created in the Middle Ages was the mechanical watch. Who invented mechanical watches? There are sources claiming that such watches first appeared in Western Europe. And yet, the first mechanical watches were invented in China and they were created by a monk, and now let’s talk about everything in order.

In 723, the Buddhist monk and mathematician Yi Xing designed a clock mechanism, which he called a “spherical map of the heavens from above,” driven by water. Water was a source of energy, but movement was regulated by mechanisms. These watches had a kind of escapement device that delayed the rotation of the water wheel until each of its buckets was filled to the top, and then allowed it to rotate at a certain angle, and thus the history of mechanical watches began.

Invention of mechanical watches in Europe

It is difficult to say when mechanical watches were invented in Europe. In the 13th century they, in any case, they already existed. Dante, for example, mentions striking wheel clocks. It is known that in 1288 a tower clock was installed in London's Westminster. They had one hand that marked only the hours (minutes were not measured then). There was no pendulum in them, and the movement was not very accurate.

Tower wheel clocks were not only time meters, but often represented a true work of art, being the pride of cathedrals and cities. For example, the tower clock of Strasbourg Cathedral (1354) showed the moon, sun, parts of the day and hours, and celebrated holidays church calendar, Easter and related days. At noon, three wise men bowed before the figurine of the Mother of God, and the rooster crowed and beat its wings. A special mechanism set in motion small cymbals that struck the time. From the Strasbourg clock to this day, only the rooster remains.

Mechanical watches in the Middle Ages

In the Middle Ages, time was not measured accurately in practice. It was divided into approximate periods - morning, noon, evening - without clear boundaries between them. French king Louis IX (1214-1270) measured the elapsed time at night by the length of a constantly shortening candle.

The only place where they tried to streamline the counting of time was the church. She divided the day not by natural phenomena(morning, evening, etc.), but in accordance with the cycle of worship, repeated daily. The countdown began with matins (towards the end of the night), and with dawn the first hour was marked and then sequentially: the third hour (in the morning), the sixth (at noon), the ninth (afternoon) in the evening and the so-called “final hour” - the time when the daily clock ended worship. But the names of the services marked not only time intervals, but the beginning of certain stages of daily worship, which fell on different “physical” times in different times of the year.

Church timekeeping was displaced in the 14th century, when striking tower clocks began to be erected on city buildings. It is interesting that in 1355, residents of a French town were given permission to build a city bell tower so that its bells would chime not the church clock, but the time of commercial transactions and the work of clothiers.

In the XIV century. people begin to diligently count time. Mechanical striking clocks became widespread, and with them the idea of ​​dividing the day into 24 equal hours firmly entered into consciousness. Later, in the 15th century, a new concept was introduced - the minute.

In 1450, a spring clock was invented, and by the end of the 15th century. Portable watches came into use, but they were still too large to be called pocket or hand watches. In Rus', tower clocks appeared in 1404 and in the 15th-16th centuries. spread throughout the country.

The role of watches in our lives is so great that it is impossible to imagine it without them. Our entire existence is divided into periods of time, which are calculated using this item.

The first concepts of measuring time go back to the ancient people, who intuitively divided the day into those known to us: morning, lunch, evening, night. Centuries passed and at the same time measurement methods improved.

The sundial is the first device that, in its functions, vaguely resembles modern watch. Initially, they were a pole stuck into the ground, which, on a drawn scale, showed the movement of the Sun with the help of a shadow. Later, portable ones appeared that were attached to buildings, and also, especially wealthy people had small watches made of silver-plated copper, while the mechanism remained the same.

Despite all the convenience for those years, they had a significant drawback - they worked exclusively on the street and in sunny weather, which was extremely inconvenient. Therefore, people came up with water clocks, after which the expression “passage of time” came to our time, then fire (or candle clocks) and sand substitutes. Step by step, making more and more new devices, people developed a clear understanding of time. And already in the fourteenth century, mechanical watches appeared, which in their structure are very similar to modern ones.

When did the first mechanical watch appear?

Europe began using mechanical watches at the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Tower wheel clock was the name of the first prototypes of the clocks known to us. The reason for this was that they were set in motion by lowering the load. A heavy weight was tied to the rope, which unwound this rope and set in motion the rotation of the axis. Time was measured by the mechanical oscillations of the pendulum. The inconvenience of using such a device was its bulky design, as well as errors in timing.

Information about the masters who discovered this invention, unfortunately, has not reached our days. However there is historical facts, which help determine the stages of development of these irreplaceable devices.

Over time, the clock began to turn into complex design, not only due to the addition of various elements in the mechanism, but also due to decorative ornaments, stucco and artistic paintings. Since then, they performed not only a practical function, but also became an object of art.

An example of such a clock is the design in the tower of Westminster Abbey in England in 1288. Also, the personification of painstaking work and incredible talent is the Prague Tower Clock, which was equipped with figures that moved with each chime and showed history. However, they all had a large error in time. The first mentions of watches with a spring mechanism appear in the second half of the fifteenth century. Thanks to him, smaller versions of watches are invented.

When did pocket watches appear?

The first pocket watch appeared in 1500, when the famous master from Nuremberg, Peter Henlein, invented the mainspring. And only after adding balance, they become not only expensive and fashionable, but also the most accurate time-keeping item.

This invention became a luxury item from the very beginning of its appearance, and therefore the design became more and more expensive and sophisticated. So, in order to decorate the dial, they began to use enamel, the case was made of expensive metals in the form of birds and animals, and supports were made from ruby ​​and sapphire for accuracy and to reduce friction. The operation of the mechanism itself could be seen through the back cover, which was made of transparent rock crystal.

Requests grew, and the imagination of the masters had no limits. Clocks began to be supplemented with other devices, such as a calendar, thermometer, and stopwatch. Thus, the creation of watches can rightfully be called a separate art.

Mechanical watches at all times they occupied a special place in people’s lives and were the subject of admiration, surprise and delight. They fascinated with the beauty and complexity of the mechanism. They distinguished their owners by their aesthetics and unique style. Years have passed, but even today nice watch show not only time, but also the prestige and status of the owner.