Friday, 17 March 2023

Clocks And Time Machines

Clocks are machines that measure time and chronometers are more accurate clocks so clocks and chronometers could have been called "time machines" except that, thanks to HG Wells, that phrase means a chronomobile - to coin a new term. Sf writers should be able to link familiar clocks to unfamiliar time machines:

a film adaptation of The Time Machine begins with many ticking clocks;

the Doctor Who villain, the Master, had a space-time vehicle that was disguised as a grandfather clock;

decades ago, a comic book villain dismantled several clocks and reassembled some of their parts into an intertemporal communicator to summon help from the future, as if time was a medium that was detected by timepieces and that could be modulated to carry a message;

Tourmalin's Time Cheques by F. Anstey involves time travelling by leaving a cheque behind a clock (I think);

"What did Time smell like? Like dust and clocks and people."
-Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles (London, 1977), p. 103;

when Jack Havig has discussed the significance of time travel:

"Silence fell. The clock on my mantel ticked aloud and the wind outside flowed past like a river."
-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), XVI, p. 175.

8 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

You should also have mentioned how, in "Delenda Est" Anderson had Manse Everard saying that Christian monks invented mechanical clocks (around AD 1200) as a means of accurately measuring the times fixed for prayer and services like Vespers and Mass.

Everard also mentioned that accurate mechanical clocks was a very basic scientific tool.

Ad astra! Sean

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul

This discussion of time measuring devices reminded me of how the OT has at least one text which seems to touch on clocks. In 2 Kings 20.1-6 mention was made of how King Hezekiah of Judah was seriously ill, of how he supplicated the Lord, and God then telling the Prophet Isaiah to inform the king that his prayer had been heard and that he would recover. The bit I want to quote are verses 7-11 [NEW AMERICAN BIBLE version]: "Isaiah then ordered a poultice of figs to be brought and applied to the boil, that he might recover. Then Hezekiah asked Isaiah, "What is the sign that the LORD will heal me and that I shall go up to the temple of the LORD on the third day?" Isaiah replied, "This will be the sign for you from the LORD that he will do what he has promised: Shall the shadow go forward or back ten steps?" "It is easy for the shadow to advance ten steps," Hezekiah answered. "Rather, let it go back ten steps." So the prophet Isaiah invoked the LORD, who made the shadow retreat the ten steps it had descended on the staircase to the terrace of Ahaz."

I thought this an interesting and subtle miracle, the prophet and the king talking about the shadow advancing or retreating. Some commentators have thought "the staircase to the terrace of Ahaz" was referring to a sundial. Meaning, if so, God moved the shadow cast by the gnomon backwards thru ten of the measured divisions of the sundial.

And this story about the shadow advancing or retreating ten steps on a sundial has obvious applications as a metaphor for time traveling.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

I think that's definitely a sundial -- the standard time-measurement device until the mechanical clock was invented. Which was much, much later.

(Water clocks are ancient, but don't cast shadows.)

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

Albeit somewhat obscure, I agree this text from Kings has a sundial in mind. I checked and the oldest known sundial goes back to about 1500 BC, in Egypt. So sundials could have been used in the Jerusalem of King Hezekiah.

Sundials also have the advantage of not being as complicated as water clocks.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Sean: they're also probably responsible for the fact that the Classical concept of "hour" was seasonally variable.

They had 12 hours from sunrise to sunset, but the hours contracted in wintertime and stretched in summertime.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

I read about that when I looked up sundials. It probably needed the invention of mechanical clocks before our system of 60 seconds to one minute, 60 minutes to one hour, and 24 hours to one day, etc., was worked out and standardized.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Though the math is Babylonian, IIRC.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

I think you are right. Which survived because here the Babylonians worked out a practical means of measuring time.

Ad astra! Sean