Horology Trivia

BY GIORGIO PERISSINOTTO

Time and Language or Language and Time
There is no question that we have segmented our existence into measurable units. Minutes or millennia, seconds or decades, hours or centuries. And the everyday language reflects this in at times surprising ways.

The word “time” seems to be at the center of it. Many languages have a word like “time”: tempo, tiempo, temps, etc. which come from a Proto-Indo-European TEMP meaning “stretch”, though experts suggest also “cut” as in “divide.” They all make sense.

“I’ll clean your clock” –a common expression heard in the United Kingdom–does not mean that you will take your timepiece to Ferdinand. It means that you will receive a good licking. The explanation is that the blow will be to the face, the dial of a clock.

The practice of saying “o’clock” is simply a remnant of simpler times when clocks weren’t very prevalent and people told time by a variety of means, depending on where they were and what references were available.

Generally, of course, the sun was used as a reference point, with solar time being slightly different than clock time. Clocks divide the time evenly, whereas, by solar time, hour lengths vary somewhat based on a variety of factors, like what season it is.

Thus, to distinguish the fact that one was referencing a clock’s time, rather than something like a sundial, as early as the fourteenth century one would say something like, “It is six of the clock,” which later got slurred down to “six o’clock” sometime around the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. In those centuries, it was also somewhat common to just drop the “o” altogether and just say something like “six clock.”

Strike and Chime
A striking clock marks the hours, the half hours and sometimes the quarters. A chiming clock marks the segments by playing a melody. The melody that the vast majority of grandfather clocks use for their chimes is Westminster Quarters. This little tune of four notes is thought to have been borrowed/inspired by Handel’s Messiah during the 5th and 6th measures of “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth.” As to the person who first put this little ditty in a clock, Dr. Joseph Jowett was hired to make the tune, possibly with the help of Professor of Music, Dr. John Randall and/or one of Jowett’s students, William Crotch.

Whatever the case, the piece of music was written in 1793 for the St. Mary the Great clock at the University Church in Cambridge. It was later adopted for the “Big Ben” clock at the Palace of Westminster, which is what spawned its widespread popularity. It may not be superfluous to again remind us that Big Ben refers to the bell and not to the clock itself.

The Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England showing
the time ball above the tower (photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

A time ball or timeball is an obsolete time-signaling device. It consists of a large, painted wooden or metal ball that is dropped at a predetermined time, principally to enable navigators aboard ships offshore to verify the setting of their marine chronometers. Accurate timekeeping is essential to the determination of longitude at sea.

Although the use of time balls has been replaced by electronic time signals, some time balls have remained operational as historical tourist attractions.

The US Naval Observatory in Washington, DC
(photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

But the word “time” is also used to signal large and unspecified segments of the human existence. Consider “It is time to leave,” which indeed can be accompanied by a quick glance at your time piece, and compare it to "These are the times that try men's souls," a simple quotation from Founding Father Thomas Paine's The American Crisis which describes the beginnings of the American Revolution, a much larger time segment. Or consider Medieval Times, or, for perhaps the vaguest of them all “Time is of the essence”.

And to conclude with a timely question: What's the difference between “It is time to do something” and “It is a time to do something”?

Time for me to go.

(From a variety of sources)