Clock Timeline

  • 600 BCE

    Invention of the Water clock

    Invention of the Water clock
    The Clepsydra was and ancient device that used the Gradual flow of water to measure time. There was two types in and outflow. One container was filled with liquid and suspended over the second one. Water dripped through a hole in the bottom of the filled container to the bottom one. On inflow water clocks, the bottom container was marked with the hours of the day. People could tell the time by how full the container became. For outflow clocks, it was just the opposite-
  • 600 BCE

    Invention of the water clock 2

    The time was marked on the top container. To tell what hour it was, people looked at how much water had drained from the container. The creators of the clepsydra where Chaldeans of ancient Babylonia
  • 250 BCE

    Greek Water Clock

    Greek Water Clock
    A prototype of the alarm clock was invented around 250 BC. The Greeks built a water clock, called a clepsydra, where the rising waters would both keep time and eventually hit a mechanical bird that triggered an alarming whistle. In 350 BC they innovated the water clock, and now it had a face with an hour hand, making the reading of the clock more precise and convenient.
  • 1364

    Mechanical Clock

    Mechanical Clock
    What makes a mechanical clock is a mechanism called an escapement, Which is the balance wheel on a watch or the pendulum on a grandfather's clock. An escapement ticks in a steady rhythm and lets the gears move forward in a series of little equal jumps. French architect Villard de Honnecourt described the first escapement we know about in AD 1250; but he didn't yet use it to control a clock. Instead he used it to control another gadget.
  • 1364

    Mechanical clock

    The first clear drawing of an escapement was given by Jacopo di Dondi and his son in 1364. They'd been building clocks for twenty years by then. So we can only guess that the first mechanical clocks were made in the late 1200s.
  • 1500

    Table Clocks

    Table clocks where just a smaller and more convenient mechanical clock.
  • 1505

    Portable Timepiece (Pomander Watch)

    Portable Timepiece (Pomander Watch)
    Peter Henlein of Nuremberg was the first to build a portable watch and the mainspring which is a key component in watches an clocks also was one of his creations. The portable watch he created is known as the Pomander Watch.
  • 1577

    Minute Hand

    In 1577, Jost Burgi invented the minute hand. Burgi's invention was part of a clock made for Tycho Brahe, an astronomer who needed an accurate clock for stargazing.
  • The pendulum Clock

    The pendulum Clock
    17th century Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens became the first to report the phenomenon of coupled oscillation in two pendulum clocks (which he invented) in 1665. He was intrigued by Galileo’s discovery of isochronism (pendulums of the same length have the same oscillation period). Huygen completed a prototype of his first pendulum clock by the end of 1656, and hired a local clockmaker named Salomon Coster to construct others. He patented the device on June 16, 1657.
  • Period: to

    Invention of the mercurial compensation pendulum and innovation of the clocks mechanical works.

    Several important watch inventions - George Graham invented mercurial compensation pendulum and dead-beat escapement for clocks, John Harrison invented grid-iron compensation pendulum and George Graham invented the cylinder escapement.
  • Enlightenment Era Advancements

    Enlightenment era in Europe brought many advances to clock mechanisms. Need for accurate maritime chronometers soon enabled ordinary and cheap watches to become very accurate. This accuracy can be attributed to the inventions of Pierre Le Roy and Thomas Earnshaw who introduced to the public temperature compensated balance wheel.
  • Electrical clock

    Electric currents can be used to replace the weight or spring as a source of power and as a means of signaling time indications from a central master clock to a wide range of distant indicating dials. Invented in 1840, the first battery electric clock was driven by a spring and pendulum and employed an electrical impulse to operate a number of dials. Considerable experimental work followed, and it was not until 1906 that the first self-contained battery-driven clock was invented
  • Modern Electric clock

    First modern electric clock created by Frank Hope-Jones. This clock became base of all modern clocks that are created today.
  • Mass production of clocks

    Clocks enter mass production