Why build clocks?
The mechanical clock was invented for religious reasons. In medieval monasteries, monks were expected to get up in the middle of the night to perform collective worship, in the service called matins. The monks needed some form of alarm to wake them up, and get them into the choir on time. They might use a simple water clock or a slowly burning candle, though this meant that a monk had to stay awake to watch it, and then ring a bell. By the 13th century, monks were experimenting with mechanical timers, powered by falling weights, which rang bells. In the 1290s, we hear of the first true mechanical clocks, in Italy and Britain, which marked time passing and ran continuously. These also used a falling weight, which turned a toothed wheel, whose speed was regulated by a horizontal cross-bar. Swinging from side to side, the cross-bar alternately blocked and released the wheel’s movement. These early clocks were very inaccurate, and had to be corrected daily by comparison with a sundial. The
