Time Telling through the Ages

PREFACE

In the midst of the world war, when ordinary forms of celebration seemed unsuitable, this book was conceived by Robt. H. Ingersoll & Bro., as a fitting memento of the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of their entrance into the watch industry, and is offered as a contribution to horological art and science. Its publication was deferred until after the signing of the peace covenant.

The research work for fact material was performed with devoted fidelity and discrimination by Mrs. Katherine Morrissey Dodge, who consulted libraries, trade publications, horological schools and authorities in leading watch companies. The following were helpfully kind to her: New York Public Library, New York City; The Congressional Library, Washington, D. C.; Newark Public Library, Newark, New Jersey; The Jewelers' Circular, New York City; Keystone Publishing Company, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Mr. John J. Bowman, Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Major Paul M. Chamberlain, Chicago, Illinois; Hamilton Watch Company, Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Mr. Henry G. Abbott, of the Calculagraph Company, New York City, and others.

Credit is also due to Mr. Walter D. Teague, the well-known artist of New York City, who acted as art editor and supervised the preparation of illustrations, typography and other art and mechanical features.

The photographic compositions are the result of the enthusiasm, the understanding and the art of Mr. Lejaren a' Hiller, of New York City. In this connection the courtesy of Mr. Henry W. Kent, Secretary of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, in permitting the use of collections of the museum in the preparation of illustrations, is appreciated.

FOREWORD

It was a moonless night in No Man's Land. A man in khaki stood silently waiting in a frontline trench. In the darkness, his eyes were drawn, fascinated, to the luminous figures on the watch-dial at his wrist. A splinter of pale light, which he knew to be the hour-hand, rested upon the figure 11. A somewhat longer splinter crept steadily from the figure 12.

"Past eleven," he whispered to himself. "Less than twenty minutes now."

To the right and to the left of him, he, now and then, could see his waiting comrades in the blackness of the trench, their outlines vaguely appearing and disappearing with the intermittent flares of distant star-shells. He knew that they, too, were intent upon tiny figures in small luminous circles and upon the steady, relentless progress of other gleaming minute-hands which moved in absolute unison with the one upon his own wrist. He knew, also, that far in the rear, clustered about their guns, were other comrades tensely counting off the passing minutes.

At twenty minutes past eleven, the artillery bombardment would begin and would continue until exactly midnight. Then would come the barrage – the protecting curtain of bursting shells behind which the khaki-clad figure and his companions would advance upon the enemy's trenches – perhaps also upon eternity.

How strangely silent it seemed after the crashing chaos of the last few days! There were moments when the rumble of distant guns almost died away, and he could hear the faint ticking of his timepiece or a whispered word out of the darkness near at hand. He likened the silence to the lull before a storm.

Five minutes thus went by!

In another fifteen minutes, the fury of the bombardment would begin; it would doubtless draw an equally furious bombardment from the enemy's guns.

At twelve-ten plus forty-five seconds, he and his platoon were to "go over the top" and plunge into the inferno of No Man's Land. That was the moment set for the advance – the moment when the barrage would lift and move forward.

The slender hand on the glowing dial stole steadily onward. It was ten minutes after now.

Ten minutes after eleven – just one hour plus forty-five seconds to wait! His thoughts flew back to his home in the great city beyond the sea.

Ten minutes after eleven – why that would be only ten minutes after six in New York! How plainly he could picture the familiar scenes of rushing, bustling life back there! Crowds were now pouring into the subways and surface cars or climbing to the level of the "L's." This was the third – the latest homeward wave. The five o'clock people had, for the most part, already reached their homes and were thinking about their dinner; the five-thirties were well upon their way.

How the millions of his native city and of other cities and towns, and even of the country districts, all moved upon schedule! Clocks and watches told them when to get up, when to eat their breakfasts, when to catch their trains, reach their work, eat their lunches, and return to their homes. Newspapers came out at certain hours; mails were delivered at definite moments; stores and mills and factories all began their work at specified times.

What a tremendous activity there was, back there in America, and how smoothly it all ran – smooth as clock-work! Why, you might almost say it ran by clock-work! The millions of watches in millions of pockets, the millions of clocks on millions of walls, all running steadily together – these were what kept the complicated machinery of modern life from getting tangled and confused.

Yes; but what did people do before they had such timepieces? Back in the very beginning, before they had invented or manufactured anything – far back in the days of the caveman – even those people must have had some method of telling time.

A bright star drew above the shadowy outline of a hill. At first the man in khaki thought that it might be a distant star-shell; but no, it was too steady and too still. Ah yes, the stars were there, even in the very beginning – and the moon and the sun, they were as regular then as now; perhaps these were the timepieces of his earliest ancestors.

A slight rustle of anticipation stirred through the waiting line and his thoughts flashed back to the present. His eyes fixed themselves again on the ghostly splinters of light at his wrist. The long hand had almost reached the figure 4 – the moment when the bombardment would begin.

He and his comrades braced themselves – and the night was shattered by the crash of artillery.

CHAPTER ONE

The Man Animal and Nature's Timepieces

The story of the watch that you hold in your hand to-day began countless centuries ago, and is as long as the history of the human race. When our earliest ancestors, living in caves, noted the regular succession of day and night, and saw how the shadows changed regularly in length and direction as day grew on toward night, then was the first, faint, feeble germ of the beginning of time-reckoning and time-measurement. The world was very, very young, so far as man was concerned, when there occurred some such scene as this:

It is early morning. The soft, red sandstone cliffs are bathed in the golden glow of dawn. As the great sun climbs higher in the eastern sky, the sharply outlined shadow of the opposite cliff descends slowly along the western wall of the narrow canyon. A shaggy head appears from an opening, half-way up the cliff, and is followed by the grotesque, stooping figure of a long-armed man, hairy and nearly naked, save for a girdle of skins. He grasps a short, thick stick, to one end of which a sharpened stone has been bound by many crossing thongs, and, without a word, he makes his way down among the bushes and stones toward the bed of the creek.

Another head appears at the same opening in the cliff – that of a brown-skinned woman with high cheek-bones, a flat nose, and tangled hair. She shouts after the retreating form of the man, and he stops, and turns abruptly. Then he points to the edge of the shadow far above his, and, with a sweeping gesture, indicates a large angular rock lying in the bed of the stream near by. Apparently understanding the woman nods and the man soon disappears into the brush.

The forenoon wears along, and the line of shadow creeps down the face of the canyon wall until it falls at last across the angular rock against which the dashing waters of the stream are breaking. The woman who has been moving about near the cave opening begins to look expectant and to cast quick glances up and down the canyon. Presently the rattle of stones caught her ear and she sees the long-armed man picking his way down a steep trail. He still carries his stone-headed club in one hand, while from the other there swings by the tail the body of a small, furry animal. Her eyes flash hungrily, and she shows her strong, white teeth in a grin of anticipation.

Perhaps it has not been hard to follow the meaning of this little drama of primitive human need. Our own needs are not so very different, even in this day, although our manners and methods have somewhat changed since the time of the caveman. Like ourselves, this savage pair awoke with sharpened appetite, but, unlike ourselves, they had neither pantry nor grocery store to supply them. Their meal-to-be, which was looking for its own breakfast among the rocks and trees, must be found and killed for the superior needs of mankind, and the hungry woman had called after her mate in order to learn when he expected to return.

No timepieces were available, but that great timepiece of nature, the sun, by which we still test the accuracy of our clocks and watches, and a shadow falling upon a certain stone, served the need of this primitive cave-dweller in making and keeping an appointment.

The sun has been, from the earliest days, the master of Time. He answered the caveman's purpose very well. The rising of the sun meant that it was time to get up; his setting brought darkness and the time to go to sleep. It was a simple system, but, then, society in those days was simple – and strenuous.

For example, it was necessary to procure a new supply of food nearly every day, as prehistoric man knew little of preserving methods. Procuring food was not so easy as one might think. It meant long and crafty hunts for game, and journeys in search of fruits and nuts. All this required daylight. By night-time the caveman was ready enough to crawl into his rock-home and sleep until the sun and his clamoring appetite called him forth once more. In fact, his life was very like that of the beasts and the birds.

But, of course, he was a man, after all. This means that a human brain was slowly developing behind his sloping forehead, and he could not stop progressing.

After a while – a long while, probably – we find him and his fellows gathered together into tribes and fighting over the possession of hunting-grounds or what not, after the amiable human fashion. Thus, society was born, and with it, organization. Tribal warfare implied working together; working together required planning ahead and making appointments; making appointments demanded the making of them by something – by some kind of a timepiece that could indicate more than a single day, since the daily position of light and shadows was now no longer sufficient. Man looked to the sky again and found such a timepiece.

Next to the sun, the moon is the most conspicuous of the heavenly objects. Its name means "the Measurer of Time." As our first ancestors perceived, the moon seemed to have the strange property of changing shape; sometimes it was a brilliant disk; sometimes a crescent; sometimes it failed to appear at all. These changes occurred over and over again – always in the same order, and the same number of days apart. What, then, could be more convenient than for the men inhabiting neighboring valleys to agree to meet at a certain spot, with arms and with several days' provisions, at the time of the next full moon? – moonlight being also propitious for a night attack.

For this and other reasons, the moon was added to the sun as a human timepiece, and man began to show his mental resources —he was able to plan ahead. Note, however, that he was not concerned with measuring the passage of time, but merely with fixing upon a future date; it was not a question of how long but of when.

This presumptuous, two-legged fighting animal, from whom we are descended, and many of whose instincts we still retain, began to enlarge his warfare, and thereby to improve his organization. For the sake of his own safety, he learned to combine with his fellows, finding strength in numbers, like the wolves in the pack; or, like ants and bees, finding in the combined efforts of many a means of gaining for each individual more food and better shelter than he could win for himself alone.

For example, it was possible that a neighboring tribe, instead of waiting to be attacked, was planning an attack upon its own account. It would not do to be surprised at night. Sentries must be established to keep watch while others slept, and to waken their comrades in case of need. Our very word "watch" is derived from the old Anglo-Saxon word "waeccan," meaning "wake." And yet people who tried to watch for long at a stretch would be apt to doze. They must be relieved at regular times; it was a matter of necessity, but how could one measure time at night?

Where man has been confronted with a pressing problem he has generally found its solution. Probably in this case the stars gave him a clue. If the sky were clear, their positions would help to divide the night into "watches" of convenient length.

Thus did primitive man begin to study the skies. No longer a mere animal, he was beginning, quite unconsciously, to give indications of becoming a student.

CHAPTER TWO

The Land Between the Rivers

Now we must jump over ages so vast in duration that all of our recorded history is by comparison, the merest fragment of time. During the prehistoric period, known to us only by certain bones, drawings, and traces of tombs and dwellings, and by a few rude implements, weapons, and ornaments, we must think of the human family as developing very, very slowly – groping in the dawn of civilization while it ate and slept, hunted, and fought, and, gradually spread over various regions of the earth.

It was in this interval, also, that man learned the use of fire and the fashioning of various tools. His club gave place to the spear, the knife, and the arrow-head weapons that were made at first by chipping flakes of flint to a sharp edge. Then, as his knowledge and skill slowly increased, he learned to work the softer metals and made his weapons and his tools of bronze. Meanwhile, he was taught, by observing in nature, to tame and to breed animals for his food and use, and to plant near home what crops he wished to reap, instead of seeking them where they grew in a wild state. Thus, he became a herdsman and farmer.

He no longer lived in caves or rude huts, but in a low, flat-roofed house built of heavy, rough stone, and, later, of stones hewn into shape or of bricks baked in the burning sunshine. Stone and clay carved or molded into images, and the colored earth, smeared into designs upon his walls, gave him the beginnings of art. And from drawing rude pictures of simple objects, as a child begins to draw even before knowing what it means to write, primitive man came at last to the greatest power of all – the art of writing.

Through all this age man continued to regulate his expanding affairs by the timepieces of the sky – the sun, the moon, and the stars. He divided time roughly into days and parts of days, into nights and watches of the night, into moons and seasons – determining the latter probably by the migration of birds, the budding of trees and flowers, the falling of leaves and other happenings in nature. But never guessing how greatly interested future generations would be in the way he did things, he has left only a few records of his activities and these have been preserved by the merest accident. The historian and the press-agent were the inventions of later days.

Thus we come down the ages to a date about 4000 B. C. at the very beginning of recorded history, and to one of the most ancient civilizations in the world – that of the region which we now call Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia lies in southwestern Asia between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and not far from the traditional site of the Garden of Eden. The name by which we know it comes from the Greek, and means, "The land between the rivers" but the people who dwelt there at the time to which we refer called it the "Land of Shinar."

This is the region in which long afterward – so the Bible tells us – Abraham left his native town, Ur of the Chaldees, to make his pioneer journey to Palestine. This is the land where the great cities of Babylon and Nineveh afterward arose; Babylon, where Daniel interpreted the dream of King Nebuchadnezzar, and Nineveh, whence the Assyrians, the fierce conquerors of the ancient world, "came down like a wolf on the fold" against the peaceful Kingdom of Judah. It is the land where, thousands of years later, the famous Arab capital of Bagdad was built; it is the land of Harun al Raschid and the "Arabian Nights," and the land which the British Army conquered in a remarkable campaign against the Turks and Germans. Mesopotamia is a land of color, brilliant life, wonders and romance. Many students and statesmen believe that it will, in days to come, grow fruitful and populous again, that it will once more be great among the countries of the earth. It is a flat region, with wide-stretching plains. For the most part, there are no hills to limit the view of the skies, and the heavens are brilliant upon starry nights.

In this favored portion of the earth, a high civilization had already been developed in the very earliest days of which we have authentic historic record. The caveman type had long disappeared and had been forgotten; people were already living in well-built cities of brick and stone. Their houses were low and flat-roofed, but the cities were surrounded with high and massive walls to protect them from enemies, and here and there within rose great square towers which were also temples. Perhaps the famous Tower of Babel was one of these, for Babel, of course, is another name for Babylon, and its people are known to have worshipped on the tops of towers, as if, by so doing, they could reach nearer to their gods. The ancient Chaldeans were religious by nature, and because the skies contained the greatest things of which they knew, they identified many of their gods with the sun, the moon, and the stars, and they worshipped these in their temples.

Thus, the sun was the god Shamash, the moon was Sin, Jupiter was Marduk, Venus was Ishtar, Mars was Nergal, Mercury was Nebo, and Saturn was Ninib.

In consequence, their priests came to give much of their time to a study of the movements of the stars. These priests, who were shrewd and learned men, discovered a great deal, but they kept their knowledge closely within the circle of their caste. Learning was not for everyone in those days because the priests posed as magicians able to interpret dreams, to explain signs, and to foretell the future. This brought them much revenue; as prophets they were not unmindful of profits.

When we consider that these astrologer-astronomers did not have telescopes or our other modern instruments, it is marvelous to see how many of the laws of the heavenly bodies they really did find out for themselves. Books could be filled, with the story of their discoveries. For example, they observed that the sun slowly changed the points at which it rose and set. During certain months, the place of sunrise traveled northward, and at the same time the sun rose higher in the sky, and at noon was more nearly overhead. At this time, the days were also longer, because the sun was above the horizon more of the time, and then it was summer. During certain other months, the sun traveled south again, and all these conditions were reversed; the days grew shorter and shorter, and it was winter. This is, of course, exactly what the sun appears to do here and now, and we may observe it for ourselves. But these Babylonian priests were the first to study these phenomena and accomplish something by applying their reasoning powers to the facts that presented themselves. They took the time which was consumed in this motion from the furthest north to the furthest south and return, and from that worked out their year.

In order to calculate time, they next devised the zodiac, a sort of belt encircling the heavens and showing the course of the sun, and the location of twelve constellations, or groups of stars, through which he would be seen to pass if his light did not blot out theirs. They divided the region of these twelve constellations into the same number of equal parts; consequently, the sun passing from any given point around the heavens to the same point, occupied in so doing an amount of time that was arbitrarily divided into twelfths.

But they also devised another twelve-part division of the year. They noticed that the moon went through her phases, from full moon to full moon in about thirty days. So one moon, or one month, corresponded with the passage of the sun through one "sign" of the zodiac. Our own word "month" might have been written "moonth," since that is its meaning. That gave them a year of twelve months, each month having thirty days, or three hundred and sixty days in all.

Then from the seven heavenly bodies which they had identified with seven great gods, they got the idea of a week of seven days, one day for the special worship of each god and named for him.

In like manner, they divided the day and the night each into twelve hours; and the hour into sixty minutes and these again into sixty seconds. The choice of "sixty" was not a chance shot or accident; it was carefully selected for practical reasons since these old astronomers were wise and level-headed men. No lower number can be divided by so many other numbers as can sixty. Just look at your watch for a moment and notice how simply and naturally the minutes, divided into fives, fit into place between the figures for the hours, and, because sixty divides evenly by fifteen and thirty, we have quarter-hours and half-hours.

Therefore, we should realize, with a bit of gratitude, that we owe these divisions of time, of which we still make use, to the ancient magician-priests of Babylon and Chaldea, thousands and thousands of years ago.

In doing all this, these early scientists developed at the same time an elaborate system of so-called "magic" by which they pretended to foretell future events and the destinies of men born on certain days. This was an important part of their priestcraft, and probably it was not the least profitable part. In fact, the priests called themselves magi, meaning "wise men" in their language, and our word "magic" is derived from "magi."

This magic, or prophetic study of the stars, we call astrology to distinguish it from the true science of astronomy. But mingled with it all, these priests possessed a wonderful amount of genuine scientific knowledge. Their year of three hundred and sixty days was, of course, five days too short, as they presently found out for themselves. In six years, the difference would amount to thirty days, which was exactly the length of one of their months. So they corrected the calendar very easily by doubling the month Adar once in six years. Thus, every sixth year contained thirteen months instead of twelve; that was the origin of the leap-year principle which we still use, although more accurately. It can be seen that, with all their superstition and their befooling of other people, the priests themselves were by no means ignorant; they were really keen observers.

This calendar, by which we still measure the years and the seasons, is so interesting a thing that it is worth while to pause for a moment in our story in order to trace out its later development. The Babylonian calendar remained practically the same up to the time of Julius Caesar, only a few years before the Christian Epoch. The names of the months had naturally been changed into the Latin language; and the Romans, instead of doubling a whole month, had come to add the extra five days to several months, one day to each. That is the reason for some of our months having thirty-one days.