Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 212, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 September 1919 — Columns, Water and Other Methods by Which Ancients Kept Track of the Time [ARTICLE]

Columns, Water and Other Methods by Which Ancients Kept Track of the Time

Sacred history furnishes the earliest reference to anything like a fixed and permanent time measurer. Isaiah speaks of the dial of Ahar which went ten degrees backward and this dial, it has been conjectured, was a tall and slender column, which cast a shadow on a series of steps with which It was encircled. The Egyptians, too, are credited with having used their monoliths, such as Cleopatra’s needle, as time measurers. The Chaldeans had other methods of measuring time. They, as well as the contemporary Hindoos, and very likely the Egyptians, were acquainted with the water clock, or clepsydra, which measured time after the fashion of the hour glass, water taking the place of sand. It is believed that the Egyptians actually hacT hour glassesffforupon one of the bas-re-liefs which have come to light after their long interment of 3,000 years or more is an object which those learned in such matters assure us can be nothing else than a sand glass. In principle the clepsydra was nothing but a rod floating upon water, which was slowly dropping from an orifice in the vessel in which it was contained. Certain divisions were marked upon the rod, and a fixed pointer served the purpo’se of a clock hand. - -