The clock is one of the most beloved symbols in culture. They symbolize time, its transience, or, on the contrary, eternity. A clock is an attempt by a person who is powerless before the passage of time, at least to track its course. Over the many hundreds of years of its existence, the watch has undergone many changes.
The first hours
Time is a phenomenon that a person is not able to perceive with any of the senses, therefore, changes in nature help him to feel time. The earth revolves around the sun, so the amount of light indicates whether it is day or night. It was the Sun that became the first reference point of man in time. The sundial is the most ancient of all invented by man. They were an ordinary pole stuck in the ground, and a timeline was drawn around it. The shadow falling to the ground from the pole served as an arrow. Such clocks nowadays often become decoration of parks, and they can be made at home using a sheet of paper and a needle.
A little later, an hourglass or water clock appeared - they measured the time during which sand or water had time to completely move along a narrow hole from the top of the clock to the bottom.
Fire clocks were also used along with sand and water clocks. They were a wick of a certain length, impregnated with a slowly burning composition. A burned out wick meant the end of a certain period of time.
The first mechanical watch, apparently, should be considered the Antikythera mechanism. That is, he, of course, was not the first, but it is the most ancient surviving sample. The mechanism was found in 1901 on a sunken ship near the Greek island of Antikythera. It consisted of 37 bronze gears in a wooden case, equipped with dials, and was intended, apparently, to calculate the movement of celestial bodies.
About 1000 in Germany, Abbot Herbert invented the first pendulum clock, which, however, did not have much success.
The first mechanical watches were set in motion with a drop weight. A stone or metal weight tied to a string or rope wound on a rotating shaft, dropping down, set this shaft in motion. Such clocks were used, for example, in city squares.
Later, Galileo Galilei improved Herbert's pendulum, which was later used in watches. Oscillatory laws were used in such watches.
Pocket and wrist watches
In the 17th century, the movement was improved so much that it could fit into a pocket watch.
Mechanical pocket watches and wristwatches work in much the same way as pendulum watches. Only the mechanism is driven not by a pendulum, but by a flywheel - a balance bar. The watch has a tightly twisted metal spiral, from its jolts the balance bar swings from side to side, setting the rest of the parts in motion.
The Latin word clocca, from which the English clock (“clock”) originated, originally meant “bell”, since the time was tracked not with the help of arrows, but with the help of bell strikes at a certain time of the day.
In general, any mechanical watch has a similar structure. They have an energy source, in this case a wound spring, a trigger mechanism, a pendulum or balancer, a mechanism for winding or shifting the hands, a gear system and a dial.
When the mechanism for winding the watch turns, the spring inside twists more tightly, but over time it unwinds. That is why such a watch must be wound.
Quartz watch
Quartz watches use a quartz crystal as the vibration-generating element. This watch requires a battery, such as a battery. When charged from a battery, a quartz crystal quickly contracts and expands, creating oscillations of the desired frequency. Such watches are considered the most accurate - they give a deviation of only 60 seconds per year.
