Renaissance: The Mechanical Clock
When most people think about the renaissance they think about the cultural change that happened in Europe. This primarily has to do with quality of living and expressions through art. The thing that interests me the most about the renaissance is the innovations and inventions that occurred. This is interesting because of the effects of these inventions on today’s world.
The clock was invented for two purposes: the first purpose was for religious people to know when to perform their duties of God. The second function was to regulate time for work purposes. This would have great economical implication because workers knew how many hours they were working and how much they should get paid.
Mechanical escapement paved the way for the mechanical clock. This kind of clock provided us with the modern hour that is 1/24 of a day noon to noon. Then around 1583 Galileo invented the pendulum. With this pendulum Galileo discovered that the length would determine how much error there was going to be associated with the clock. He got the error down from roughly 15 minutes a day to about 10 seconds a day.
In today’s society we have clocks everywhere from alarm clocks, wall clocks, computer clock, clocks on our wrists and bell towers. We don’t even think about what time it is because it is shown to us in so many different ways. Back during the Renaissance this would have been a huge innovation. Being able to coordinate meetings, knowing how long you have worked, and being able to make a schedule just to name a few. This might not be known as one of the most famous invention of the times but it definitely something that we use today.
http://www.neo-tech.com/businessmen/part5.html