 CHAPTER 18 THE END OF THE JOURNEY Did you ever, at the end of a journey, perhaps across water or up to the top of some high hill, look backward to the place from whence you came and wonder that it seemed so far away? Now as we have completed our journey together, through the history of man's struggle to gain knowledge and control over time, we are impressed with the great contrast between time as it was to mankind in the beginning and time as it is to us today. The caveman with whom we began this story lived close to nature, taking his sense of time from her as he took all else. Morning was when the light came and he waked and was hungry, noon was when the sun was highest, and night was the time of lengthened shadows and the state of darkness. We see these same things, but for us they have not the same meanings. We count the time by hours and minutes, and we reckon these by machines which we have made called clocks and watches. These mean so much more to us. That when we set all the clocks forward another hour to save daylight it seems to us as if we had changed the actual time. It was practically as if we had performed the miracle of Joshua who in Bible story made the sun stand still, or the miracle of Isaiah who made the shadow go back ten steps on the dial of Ahaz. After a few days we did not feel as if we had set the clocks. We felt as if we had made the sun wait for us, and the very day come earlier. And so it is with the seasons. The caveman called it spring when the swallows came and autumn when the leaves changed their color, but we judge of these things by the calendar. We say that the spring is very late this year, or that the leaves are beginning to turn early. We have a proverb that one swallow does not make a summer, nor do all the swallows, so far as we moderns are concerned. It is summer for us upon a certain day, no matter what the swallows do, but for the caveman summer was when the swallows came whenever that might be. It is like that today among primitive peoples. The Turk who listens for the crowing of a cock, or the braying of an ass to tell him of the hour, or calls the cat to him to look at its eyes and judge the time by the shape of their pupils. He is more like the caveman in this than like ourselves. So is the South Sea islander who knows the season of the year from the direction of the trade winds. So is the patient savage who cares little as to how long he must wait for the creature he is hunting to come near the spot where he lies hidden. How different it all is with ourselves. We rise at a certain hour, and so many minutes later we have our breakfast. At such time we must be at work. Our work itself is all made of appointments, one after another, or of tasks to be finished within a certain time. Our meals, our hours of rest, our meetings with our friends, our recreations, and our pleasures. All these, until again at a certain time we go to bed. In order that so many hours of sleep may make us fit for the next day, are measured by the clock and counted out by the tick of a toothed wheel, or the regular swing of a pendulum. We say that the savage has no sense of the value of time. We have, and it is by that fact largely that we are better off than he. Value means measure. You cannot value a thing unless you can measure it exactly. And so, because we can measure time, we can see what time is worth to us, and make it worth more. The savage keeps an appointment when he happens to make one, but we, because we know how long it takes to reach a certain place, or how long a time we need, or wish to spend with a certain man, can make and keep many appointments. We can travel like the wind from place to place, because in measuring time we can measure speed, and therefore we can make speed safe and possible. We can talk to our friend a thousand miles away, or signal by electric waves around the world. We do these things because our sense of time has told us that the old way of sending letters and messages was too slow. So we have set to work to invent ways that should be quicker. We should never have had the telephone to cable all the wireless, unless we had cared about time, and been able to measure it. The caveman lived perhaps as many years as we, but how much did he do in those years? We, who have learned to measure years, and to allot each day an hour to sundry tasks, have made ourselves able to do far more in a lifetime, many times more. We do not live a greater number of years, but it is as if we lived many lives in one. We speak of time as we speak of money, of saving, and wasting, and spending. Well, time is money, as Ben Franklin said, but it is something more. Time is life. And we think of our lives as so much time at our command, and therefore we can make the most of them. The gulf between us and the primitive men is a contrast of living, less or more. And our more life comes in great measure from our having learned to measure time. Everyone who's read the story of Aladdin and his wonderful lamp. You will remember that the poor boy came into possession of a lamp which quickly made him the richest, the most powerful person in the world, since, through owning it, he could control the service of a mighty genie able to perform the most incredible tasks. The modern man, every man, is something like Aladdin. Only he is much more powerful. He has the genie of steam to work for him when he pulls the lever, and the genie of electricity, ready to serve him if he but press a button. He has many other mighty servants that modern science has given to him, but greatest of all, most useful of all, is the slave of the watch, which lies in his pocket, mighty Time himself. This ability to record time, and therefore to control it, is perhaps the greatest of all man's triumphs. Only see what it has done for him. Have you ever thought of yourself as a person of no special importance? Why, you have far more actual power than was possessed by Alexander the Great Julius Caesar or Charlemagne. You can command forces and can accomplish results that would have made any of these proud autocrats stare in wonder. If you do not stand out above your age, as they did above their ages, it is simply because millions of other people besides yourself also possess these powers. It is undoubtedly true that we are today a race of giants, and it is also true that each of our powers is directly or indirectly due to the common fact that we all can keep track of time. For consider that what mankind can accomplish today depends upon the ability of people to work together, and that working together would seize if people had no accurate means for telling time. For example, you make a railway journey upon a matter of importance to you. The first thing that you do is to examine a timetable on which is shown the minute when the train is due to leave. You calculate to yourself how many minutes you must allow for reaching the station, and then look at your watch to see how long you will still have for other work. If you had not watch or clock, or you were dependent merely upon the position of the sun, you might go to the station several hours ahead of time in order to be on the safe side. During the hours thus saved, you can accomplish a great deal of work. It is as though your day had been made several hours longer. Unseen in your pocket, your watch ticks steadily. You trust it absolutely, and you know that it will be faithful to its trust. Occasionally you glance at it, and when the hand reached the limit of safety, you start for the train. You reach the station three or four minutes before train time, and find the tracks clear. No train is in sight. This, however, does not cause you the least uneasiness. You merely take your watch from your pocket, and look expectantly up the line, perhaps a minute before the train is due. You hear a distant whistle, then the approaching roar of wheels upon the rails, and just as the watch hand reaches the proper moment. The train itself whirls round the curve, and draws up to the station exactly on time. As you proceed upon your way, you notice how other people at other stations are also meeting their schedules and conserving their time. You see the conductor glance at his watch as he gives the engineer the starting signal. You realize that the whole transportation system is merely an enormous piece of clockwork, and that it, in turn, is a part of the vaster clockwork of modern civilization. Turn where you will. There is nothing that you can do and nothing that you can use, which is not dependent upon the ticking of clockwork. The locomotive, which pulls your train, the cars in which you ride, the rails upon which you pass, all of these are products of factories, but the factories are run upon the tying basis. There is no other way in which they could be run. The workmen in these factories leave their records upon time clocks, when they come and when they go. If the workmen were not there at the same time, the work could not be done, since most of modern work depends upon the ability of people to work together at the same task. Even if one man were late, it might lose time for many. The clothes that you wear come from other factories, where other workmen have time clocks and watches. The building that you see from the windows were put up on the tying basis and were paid for according to the movement of the hands upon watch dials. You buy a newspaper, making sure that you are getting the latest edition, and it is at once as though you looked into a great mirror reflecting the activities of all the world. But all of the dispatches bear a date line, and many of them are also marked with the hour. Before the days of newspapers, people felt themselves to be a part of the lives of their own immediate neighborhood, and knew only vaguely of what went on at a distance. But now, each day, one feels himself to be a part of the great human family, and can sometimes make his plans with reference to things that may be occurring thousands of miles away. But the newspaper itself is a product of a clockwork. There is perhaps no institution whose workers keep closer track of the passage of the minutes. In view of all these things, does it seem too much to claim that if all the timepieces in existence were destroyed and men were given no other means for telling time, civilization would swiftly drop to pieces, and man would find himself traveling backward to the conditions of the caveman? But there is one thing in our modern timekeeping which we still have in common with the first men who ever kept the time. We still go by the sun, and the stars, and refer all our measure to that apparent revolution of the heavens which we know to be really the motion of our world itself. As did those wise men of old Babylon, so do we even now, spying upon the mighty master clock of the universe to correct all our little timepieces thereby? A man sits alone in an observatory with his eye to a telescope. That telescope is of a certain kind called a transit. It is fixed upon the meridian, the north and south line in the sky over that place. And a thread of a spiderweb across the lens marks for him the exact position of the line in the very middle of his field of view. So as he watches, he can see one star after another come into view at one side of the glass and pass across it to the other side and disappear. He is watching the world go round. A certain star appears. One which his calculations have told him will cross the meridian at a certain particular instant. Beside him is an electrical device connected with a clock, which marks off seconds at intervals round a revolving drum. The star draws nearer to the center of his field. As it crosses the hairline, the observer touches a key, and the precise instant of its crossing is recorded upon the drum to within a fraction of a second. Since the clock has marked its record of the seconds there, the clock can be corrected by the star. Now if that man had been a priest in Babylon, he would have kept his knowledge as a means of power to himself and to his equals. If he had been a dweller in a somewhat later age, he would have kept it to himself no less, either because people would not believe or because the claim of too deep knowledge of the secrets of nature might put his life in danger. But he is a modern, and so his knowledge is for all who seek it. On some tall building in a distant city, a time ball hangs suspended at the top of its pole, and people pause to look up at it. They hold their watches in their hands. Upon the tick of noon an impulse will come from the observatory, and the ball will drop. Then those who have been looking will set the hands of their watches and pass on. At the same instant, the news of noon will be flashed by telegraph across the land, and by wireless, through ships at sea. The whole western union system will suspend business for a little while the lines are connected and the observatory at Washington ticks off the seconds. Everywhere there are electric clocks, automatically controlled by some master clock, which in turn is governed by the observatory time. So we all, as a matter of course, and without thinking, set our watches by the star. Civilization every day catches step with the heavenly bodies. Back of all that we see of life therefore stands the great fact of measuring time, and those who are engaged in giving to man the instruments for this purpose have a special responsibility. Perhaps the ancient peoples were not so far wrong when they permitted time-telling to be a privilege of the priests. It is far more than a matter of money-making. It is a fixing for humanity of the standards of daily life. It is a duty which lies at the foundation of modern efficiency. It is even a sacred trust. Therefore the man who makes or sells unreliable timepieces is false to his trust. Through his action people are thrown out of adjustment with the world about them, and they in turn we seriously interfere with the plans of many others. It is hard to believe that there are some people who will still look upon a watch as jewelry, or that there are some dealers who are more interested in the watch case than in the movement it contains. The watchman of olden times was a public officer. He was chosen for his reliability, and people felt confidence when he called the hours. The watch dealer of today is in a somewhat similar position. He has a serious duty to his community. He is not chosen by the public, and yet, even more than the watchman, he is a public servant, since the watches that he puts into people's pockets are their principal means of adjustment to the busy affairs of life. In a sense, he supplies them with the basis of their efficiency. His duty is that of supplying the largest practicable degree of accuracy to the largest possible number of people. The slave of the watch will not obey the owner of an inaccurate timepiece. Time itself is elemental. It had no beginning and can have no ending. It is like a great ocean which flows round all of the earth, and neither begins nor ends in any one place. But time for any man is exactly according to his use of it. It is as though a man were to go to the shore of the boundless ocean with a tin cup in his hand. If he could get no more than a cup full of water, it would not be because of any limit in the amount available, but merely in his means for carrying it away. Should he have a pail, a barrel, or any larger receptacle, then the water would belong to him in a correspondingly larger amount. Thus time each day presents itself equally to everyone upon the earth. But some receive it in cups, some in pails, and some in barrels. Some make of their day a thing of no results, while others fill it with real achievement. Those who achieve are they who have learned to value time, and to make it serve them as the mighty genie that it is. These are the wonders which Kipling had in mind when he wrote, if you can fill each unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distant run, yours is the earth and everything that's on it, and what is more you'll be a man, my son. End of Chapter 18. It may be interesting to look a little more closely at the result of so many years and so many inventions, to see what its parts are, and how they are put together, and to observe how the wonderful little machine does its work. Modern clocks and watches are nearly enough alike in their structure and way of working, so that if we understand the one, we shall easily understand the other also. The differences between them are few and slight and easy to explain. So let us take for our example a typical modern watch movement, which is easily the more beautiful and interesting mechanism of the two. First of all, as we saw in the days of Devik and Henline, a watch or a clock is a machine for keeping time. So it must have three essential parts. First, the power to make it go. Second, the regulator to make it keep time. And third, the hands and face to show plainly the time it keeps. Each of these three parts is itself made up of several others. The power or energy which runs the watch is put into it by the winding which coils up the main spring. The outer end of this spring is attached to the rim of the main wheel, and after the spring is wound, this wheel would whirl around and let the spring run down instantly if there was nothing to stop it. The teeth on this wheel, however, are geared into the second or center pinion, which makes it run the entire movement while running down slowly, instead of flying round and uncoiling at once. As we will see later, the spring power is transmitted through the train of wheels and the lever to the balance wheel, which lets the escape wheel turn a little each time it swings, while it simultaneously receives by means of the lever from the escape wheel, the impulse or power which keeps it running. Thus the swinging of the balance lets the main spring down gradually, while drawing its power from it. The spring is made as thin as it can be, and still have power enough to make the watch go. For a modern watch this is about one flea power. One horsepower, which is only a small fraction of the power of the average automobile, would be enough to drive all the millions of watches in the world. The center pinion into which the main spring is geared is attached to its stuff, to which is also fastened the large center wheel, so that the spring cannot turn this pinion without also turning the center wheel. But the center wheel is itself geared into the third pinion, which is attached to the third wheel, and this again is geared into the fourth pinion, attached to the fourth wheel. The fourth wheel gears into the escape pinion, which revolves with the escape wheel, so that none of these wheels or pinions can turn except when the escape wheel does. But there is a constant pressure from the spring on all of these wheels, which together constitute what is called the train. The escape wheel therefore wants to turn continually, and if it was not restrained it would revolve rapidly, letting the movement run down. But it is retarded and can only turn from one tooth to the next, each time the balance turns. This action is secured by connecting the balance and the escape wheel by means of the lever, one end of which forms an anchor shaped like a rocking beam, called the pellet. In the pellet are two jeweled projections called the pellet jewels, which intercept the escape wheel by being thrust between its teeth, letting it turn a distance of only one tooth at each swing of the balance, as the pellet rocks back and forth. The other end of the lever is fork shaped, having two prongs. On the staff with the balance instead of pinion, as all the other wheels have, is a plain toothless disc called the roller, from the lower side of which projects a pin or rod made of garment. This is called the jewel pin or the roller jewel. The roller being fastened to the balance staff of course turns just as the balance turns and was it the jewel pin. And the lever is just long enough and is so placed that every time the balance turns the jewel pin fits into the slot between the prongs of the lever fork, carrying it first one way and then as the balance comes back the other way. Thus the lever is kept oscillating back and forth rocking the pellet and withdrawing one pellet jewel, releasing the escape wheel just long enough to let it run to its next tooth before the other pellet jewel is thrust in to stop it. It is a beautiful thing to watch, like the beating of a tiny heart or the breathing of a small quick creature. The hairspring almost seems to be alive and indeed it is in a way the very pulse of the machine. There's only one more important point to understand. You know how the power gets as far as the escape wheel from the mainspring and how the motion of the balance lets the escape wheel revolve a tooth at a time. But you have still to learn how the power which keeps the balance rotating reaches it from the escape wheel through the lever. Here is the most interesting feature of a watch movement. After the balance has been started its momentum at each turn starts the lever when the jewel pin strikes it. But unless the balance was constantly supplied with new power it would soon stop and the watch would not run. It will be noticed however from the illustration that the teeth of the escape wheel are peculiar in shape and very different from those of the other wheels. The ends of the pellet jewels are also cuffed at a peculiar angle. Now each time just before the jewel pin starts to shift the lever from one side to the other the latter is in such a position that one of the pellet jewels is thrust in so that its side is against that of one of the teeth of the escape wheel keeping it from turning. But the instant the lever commences to move it begins to draw the pellet jewel outward from the tooth until the corner of the jewel passes the corner of the tooth. Then the escape wheel is released and the power that is behind it makes it turn quickly and on account of the shape of the tooth it gives the pellet jewel a sharp push outward swinging the lever causing it at the other end to impart a quick thrust to the jewel pin thereby accelerating the speed of the balance and renewing its momentum. Thus the balance receives the power to keep it in motion swinging it as far as the hairspring allows. The hairsprings and reverses it and swings it until the jewel pin again starts the lever in the other direction releasing the escape wheel from which it receives another impulse and so on as long as the mainspring is kept mown. A watching perfect time takes five times to the second that means 18,000 swings of the balance every hour or 432,000 in a day and in that time the rim of the balance travels about 10 miles. A clock is essentially only a larger and stronger watch just as a watch is a clock made small enough and light enough to be carried about conveniently but the working of the two is practically the same. They are but different members of the same family varying types of one time keeping machine which is among the most ingenious and valuable things that man has made. One interesting thing to know about a watch is that if it is keeping good time it will serve for a fairly accurate compass. So if you are ever lost in the woods your watch may help you out again. Lay it flat face upward and point the hour hand towards the sun. Then south will be in the direction halfway between the hour hand and the figure 12 counting forward as the hand turns in the morning hours and backward in the afternoon. This is because the hour hand moves around the dial just twice as fast as the sun moves around the sky making a full circle in 12 hours while the sun makes its half circle from horizon to horizon. Now the sun is always to the southward of you as you are any of our north of the equator. At noon the sun is practically due south. At that hour both hands of your watch are together on the figure 12 and the hour hand pointing to the sun points in that direction. At 6am the sun is nearly east so if the hour hand now on the figure 6 is pointed eastward towards the sun then south would be in the line just over the figure 9. At 6pm the sun being in the west and the hour hand pointed at it south would be halfway back towards the figure 12 or just over the figure 3. For other morning or afternoon hours the same reasoning holds too. End of Appendix A. End of Time Telling Through the Ages by Harry Chase Brearley