North Coast Imports /museum

This website is dedicated to presenting some important timepieces and clockwork devices for public appreciation and education. Most of the pieces contained in our /museum site are not available for purchase but are part of our friends’ fine personal collections. Clocks and watches are artifacts of man’s technological advancement. The development of our interpretation of time is synonymous with the way in which we have advanced as a civilization. If you are a clock or clockwork lover, enjoy these pages and email us if you have any questions or comments.

Here is a Wikipedia primer timeline for the developments in horology and time. Refer to it as a snapshot of horological inventions and discoveries.

12,000 – 30,000 BCE (BC) – Artifacts from the Paleolithic that suggest measurements of the moon’s motion.

From Wikipedia: Lunar calendars were among the first to appear, with all years having twelve lunar months (approximately 354 days). Without intercalation to add days or months to some years, seasons quickly drift in a calendar based solely on twelve lunar months. Lunisolar calendars have a thirteenth month added to some years to make up for the difference between a full year (now known to be about 365.24 days) and a year of just twelve lunar months. The numbers twelve and thirteen came to feature prominently in many cultures, at least partly due to this relationship of months to years.

2600 – 2400 BCE – Stonehenge 3 II

From Wikipedia:
The timber circle was orientated towards the rising sun on the midwinter solstice, opposing the solar alignments at Stonehenge, whilst the avenue was aligned with the setting sun on the summer solstice and led from the river to the timber circle. Evidence of huge fires on the banks of the Avon between the two avenues also suggests that both circles were linked, and they were perhaps used as a procession route on the longest and shortest days of the year. Parker Pearson speculates that the wooden circle at Durrington Walls was the centre of a ‘land of the living’, whilst the stone circle represented a ‘land of the dead’, with the Avon serving as a journey between the two.

1500 BCE – Egypt has an early type of Sundial where a T-square casts a shadow which moves across a non-liner scale.

1525–1504 BCE – Water clock or clepsydra – Found in the tomb of Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep I.

3rd Century BCE – Water Clock – Greek engineer Philo of Byzantium described a mechanical clock with water escapement.

150-100 BCE – Antikythera Mechanism – Mysterious mechanical device found in an ancient Greek ship.

From Wikipedia:
The mechanism has three main dials, one on the front, and two on the back. The front dial has two concentric scales. The outer ring is marked off with the days of the 365-day Egyptian calendar, or the Sothic year, based on the Sothic cycle. Inside this, there is a second dial marked with the Greek signs of the Zodiac and divided into degrees. The calendar dial can be moved to compensate for the effect of the extra quarter day in the solar year (there are 365.2422 days per year) by turning the scale backwards one day every four years.

45 BCE – The Julian Calendar – Julius Caesar set the world to the Solar Calendar

500 – 900 – Candle Clocks – It is not known when candle clocks were first used, though they are mentioned in a Chinese poem by You Jianfu and they are also attributed to King Alfred the Great.

723-725 - Water-powered armillary sphere and clock drive – China

11th Century – Mechanical Clock with escapement – China

1010-1012 – An Atom is described as the smallest division of time. – Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion (a science text) defined an atom as 1/564 of a momentum (1½ minutes), and thus equal to 15/94 of a second. It was used in the computus, the process of calculating the date of Easter.

C. 1230 – Mechanical Escapement – Villard de Honnecourt invented a kind of escapement that was used for bell-ringing mechanisms.

1277 – Mercury Escapement – Arabia

C. 1300 – Verge Escapement

From Wikipedia:
Its invention is important in the history of technology, because it made possible the development of all-mechanical clocks. This caused a shift from measuring time by continuous processes, such as the flow of liquid in water clocks, to repetitive, oscillatory processes, such as the swing of pendulums, which had the potential to be more accurate. Oscillating timekeepers are at the heart of every clock today.

1330 – Mechanical Orrery – Richard of Wallingford (1292–1336), abbot of St. Alban’s abbey, famously built a mechanical clock as an astronomical orrery.

1352-1354 – Astronomical Clock – The first clock of the Strasbourg Cathedral, the “Three Kings Clock,” had several automata including a gilded crowing rooster. At the base a painted figure of a zodiacal man showed the relationship between the signs of the zodiac and parts of the human body

C. 1400 – Fusee

From Wikipedia:
Although many sources erroneously credit Jacob Zech of Prague with inventing it around 1525, it actually appeared with the first spring driven clocks in the 1400s. The idea probably did not originate with clockmakers, since the earliest known example is in a crossbow windlass in a 1405 military manuscript. Drawings from the 1400s by Filippo Brunelleschi and Leonardo da Vinci show fusees. The earliest existing clock with a fusee, also the earliest spring-powered clock, is the Burgunderuhr (Burgundy clock), a chamber clock whose iconography suggests it was made for Phillipe the Good, Duke of Burgundy about 1430, now in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum. The earliest definitely dated fusee clock was made by Zech in 1525. The word fusee comes from the French fusée and late Latin fusata, ‘spindle full of thread’.

1410 – Prague Astronomical Clock – Clockmaker Mikuláš of Kada? and Jan Šindel, the latter a professor of mathematics and astronomy at Charles University, made the clock and astronomical dial. Other parts, including the calendar and moving figures were added around 1490.

From Wikipedia:
At the outer edge of the clock, golden Schwabacher numerals are set on a black background. These numbers indicate Old Czech Time (or Italian hours), with 24 indicating the time of sunset, which varies during the year from as early as 16:00 in winter to 20:16 in summer. This ring moves back and forth during the year to coincide with the time of sunset.

1502 – Pocket Watch – Peter Henlein builds the first known pocket watch.

1547 – 1574 – Astronomical Clock – The second astronomical clock was built in the Strasbourg Cathedral by Swiss clockmakers Isaac Habrecht and Josia Habrecht, as well as the astronomer and musician David Wolckenstein.

1577 – Minute Hand – Jost Bürgi, Switzerland

1582 – The Gregorian Calendar – Pope Gregory XIII introduced a correction to the Julian Calendar, shortening the year of 1582.

1584 – Cross Beat Escapement – Jost Bürgi, Switzerland

1612 – 1681 – Longitude

From Wikipedia:
Having determined the orbital periods of Jupiter’s satellites, Galileo Galilei proposed that with sufficiently accurate knowledge of their orbits one could use their positions as a universal clock, and this would make possible the determination of longitude. He worked on this problem from time to time during the remainder of his life; but the practical problems were severe. The method was first successfully applied by Giovanni Domenico Cassini in 1681.

1629 – Cuckoo Clock – Philipp Hainhofer (1578–1647) penned the first known description of a cuckoo clock.

1640 – Household Clock – Black Forest artisans produce the first mechanical clocks for the homes of the rising middle class.

1642 – Pendulum Clock – Galileo Galilei designed the periodic swing of a pendulum to be used as an escapement for a mechanical clock.

1650 – Organ Clock – The scholar Athanasius Kircher describes a mechanical organ with several automated figures, including a mechanical cuckoo.

1655 – Solar Noon – Cassini builds the heliometer of San Petronio in Bologna, to standardise Solar noon.

1657 – Pendulum Clock – Christiaan Huygens patented and built the first example of a mechanical clock using a pendulum as an escapement.