Pope Sylvester II and the pendulum
Scott F. Brown
I am doing some research into medieval clocks and there is one bit of
information that keeps nagging at me. Many sources credit Da Vinci and
Galileo with the theory of using a pendulum to regulate a clock. The credit
for actually building a working model goes to Christian Huygens.
The question I have is this, many sources credit the "invention" of the
pendulum clock to Pope Sylvester II several hundred years earlier. I was
wondering if anyone knew why so many sources credit him with the invention
of the pedulum clock. Did he just come up with the theory? Or did he
possibly build a model to prove it? I'm just curious to resolve why he is
credited by a few(not most) sources with this invention.
Scott F. Brown
BTW: The reason I am asking this is that I am currently working on building
a reproduction of a medieval clock using traditional blacksmithing
techniques. Examples of my wooden model can be seen at
www.mindspring.com/~bomlin/images/clock1.jpg clock2.jpg and clock3.jpg.
The question about when the pendulum came around is just bothering me.
John Losch
Scott, and the list:
Below is a note I wrote in reply to a question similar to yours in 1996.
Later in that year I realized that we were experiencing the 1000th year of
mechanical horology. I tried to publicize the fact, and the response was
about the same as one hand clapping. A missed opportunity for a party.
Father Gerbert a.k.a. Pope Sylvester II
5/23/96
The life of Father Gerbert sets an example of the fact that although one
need not be Catholic to have catholic tastes, in the case of his ultimate
achievement, it probably helped.
Gerbert, a shepherd boy born in France around 920 A.D., used
his night watch of the flocks to study astronomy, thereby at-
tracting the attention of a priest who directed him towards
formal education. He studied in the monastery of St. Gérald
where he soon mastered all his teachers could offer.
In 955 Count Borel, of Barcelona, took Gerbert with him to
study in Cordova, Spain, where he worked with Prince Abdel-Rahman
III, a Moorish scientist, as well as other Muslim intellectuals.
From there he traveled to Rome with Count Borel, had an audience
with Pope John XII in 961, and made contacts leading to a posi-
tion in the court of Louis V, king of France.
Intellectual curiosity led Gerbert to visit a number of
significant monasteries of France, then the principal seats of
learning in that country. During that time, being as much
concerned with things temporal as spiritual, he commenced to
apply mechanical knowledge to the measurement of time. While
visiting the monastery at Rheims he constructed a clock which,
because of its mysterious workings, was thought to be the work of
the devil.
In 996 Gerbert constructed a well documented weight driven clock for
the University of Magdeburg. History has dubbed Gerbert the first to make a
mechanical clock. "After various ups and downs in life," he was elected
Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, 999, where he took the name Sylvester II.
He died 1003, respected as much for his scientific achievements as for the
dignity of his papal reign. Not bad for a country clockmaker.
Text based upon, and quote drawn from TREATISE ON WATCH-WORK PAST
& PRESENT, by the Rev. H. L. Nelthropp, E. & F. N. Spon, London,
1873.
Jcl
322 words
"Scott F. Brown" <bom...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
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Scott F. Brown
Thanks for information. Was there any information on the pendulum in his
clock? Or do most of the references just refer to a mechanical clock?
Thanks again...
Paul Cooper
Sylvester's clock was not a pendulum clock, it probably used the verge
and foliot escapement - I don't think there are any remains of
Sylvester's clock, but all early clocks and illustrations of clocks
show this type of escapement - the clock gallery of the British Museum
has an excellent collection showing early escapements, with many
excellent working models to show how they worked. All clocks prior to
Galileo/Huygens used verge and foliot type escapements where the
period was affected by the power available - hence the difficulties of
making spring driven clocks that kept time. Galileo first formulated
part of the theory of the pendulum (that its period only depended on
its length, the only bit important to clocks) and Huygens developed
the theory and made the first practical model, though Galileo's son
made a working model that was supposed to be to his father's design.
Paul
Chris Malcolm
> In 996 Gerbert constructed a well documented weight driven clock for
>the University of Magdeburg. History has dubbed Gerbert the first to make a
>mechanical clock. "After various ups and downs in life," he was elected
>Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, 999, where he took the name Sylvester II.
>He died 1003, respected as much for his scientific achievements as for the
>dignity of his papal reign. Not bad for a country clockmaker.
Rummaging briefly on the web for more details I was unable to come up
with any authoritative source, but did several times, in different
texts, come across the remark that the mechanical part of this clock
was the weight-driven chimes, and the time-keeping was a water clock
mechanism.
--
Chris Malcolm c...@dai.ed.ac.uk +44 (0)131 650 3085
School of Artificial Intelligence, Division of Informatics
Edinburgh University, 5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/daidb/people/homes/cam/ ] DoD #205
Bob
in the early 700's; they were water-wheels with mechanically linked buckets,
so that they moved intermittently. They had been using clepsydra (water
clocks) to move astronomical displays, including automata, for the preceding
6 centuries, at least. The first clock employing this system to be fully
described was completed in 1088 (and the manuscript printed in 1172).
There was also an ancient (Roman?) device employing a rope on a drum,
used for driving mechanical hammers, which might be described as an
escapement, but no application to clocks has been documented. Likewise,
there is a medieval device using a flying rope, without clock application.
The pendulum debate (Galileo vs. Huyghens) has been fully fought out in
the most partisan manner, taking on tints, not only of religion (as Mr.
Losch alludes) but of nationality. However, by now I think (full
disclosure: I was raised Catholic, and am neither Dutch nor Italian) that,
though Galileo first published his suspicion of isochronism of the pendulum,
and drew a proposed escapement in his notebook, Huyghens was the first to
show (paradoxically) that the simple circular pendulum path does NOT exhibit
isochronism, but that a cycloidal path does, while commissioning the first
pendulum clocks, and even patenting them.
BTW, I think your wooden tower clock is very cool! Will you be
publishing it?
"Chris Malcolm" <c...@holyrood.ed.ac.uk> wrote in message
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Jack Denver
to come by. Not much was written down in the first place given that hardly
anyone could write , even less has survived into the present. "Science" as
we know it was non-existent - most efforts in the West were directed toward
religious pursuits. Superstitition and ignorance were rife. As John's
summary shows, attributing causation to the devil or witchcraft was
considered an acceptable explanation for poorly understood phenomena.
Given this environment, even if Sylvester had used a pendulum in his clock
(which is highly doubtful), there was no one else around to understand its
import and it was not adopted into the other clocks of the time or indeed
until the later work of Huygens and Galileo permanently brought the pendulum
into horology. No real drawings or documentation of Sylvester's clock still
exists, just the sketchiest of descriptions, so we really have no idea what
it looked like. Chances are those who attribute the pendulum to Sylvester
have very little understanding of clockworks and just assumed that a
mechanical clock with an escapement also would have a pendulum as in the
clocks they were familiar with - more wishful thinking than factual history.
If I were trying to reproduce a circa 996 clock, it would not have a
pendulum. As Paul said, it would use a verge and foliot escapement (and
would keep lousy time - about 15 mins/day at best). See more here:
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/on-line/huygens/page2.asp
"Scott F. Brown" <bom...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
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Scott F. Brown
> pendulum. As Paul said, it would use a verge and foliot escapement (and
> would keep lousy time - about 15 mins/day at best). See more here:
Jack, thanks for the info. I wasn't planning on using a pendulum for the
metal clocks. The medieval clocks I have made have all been verge and
foilot. I have to agree with your statements about the uninformed masses
making the assumption that because you have a clock, you have a pendulum.
Since I often get the question of why my clocks are inaccurate(5-15 minutes
a day) I wanted to make sure about the pendulum issue. I was pretty sure,
it just annoyed me that several websites credited Pope Sylvester with the
pendulum when it should probably read that he made/invented a simple water
or mechanical clock.
Oh well, thanks for all the responses guys. I will go with the assumption
that the pendulums definitely were not part of the middle ages and stick
with my crown wheels and verge and foilot. Time to go back to the forge...
I have a lot to learn before I can do the clocks using period techniques...
Scott F. Brown
Jack Denver
minimal credibility if they come from a reputable publisher (this would NOT
include the Catholic Encyclopedia). Anybody can say anything on a website.
It is pretty amazing when you think about it that the pendulum clock is such
a recent invention. ..1656 is 600 years after Sylvester (almost as distant
as Columbus is from us) 200 years after DaVinci and the Renaissance, 36
years after the landing at Plymouth Rock (maybe part of the reason they
ended up on Cape Cod when they were sailing for Virginia), 40 years after
Shakespeare, 20 years after the founding of Harvard, contemporaneous with
Newton...virtually the modern age. While one would have needed advanced
math to do Huygens' cycloidal pendulum, one could imagine that a straight
pendulum could have been accidentally hit upon as an enhancement to a verge
escapement by a clever craftsman sometime during the 600 years between
Sylvester and Huygens, even by one that was unlettered in math, and yet
somehow it never was...the pendulum was a true scientific breakthru,
developed by someone we can clearly identify with today as a scientist.
"Scott F. Brown" <bom...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
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