Part 11. A Piece Of Time That Changed Time Forever

Miniaturization.

In the last 60 years it’s been one of the more important influences and barriers to our technological advancement.

Thanks to our ability to reduce the size of parts such as semiconductors, charge couple devices, LCD displays and the integrated circuit, we have seen computers reduce from the size of a house to something much, much more powerful that often sits in your pocket.

It seems ironic that decreasing something in size, helps increase what we can achieve through computer power, energy usage and storage.

In 1965 Gordon E. Moore, introduced his now famous concept, Moores law.
As Wikipedia reports:

“Moore’s law describes a long-term trend in the history of computing hardware, in which the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit has doubled approximately every two years.^”

Interestingly enough, the law also fits to many other parts of digital devices like processing speed, memory capacity and the number and size of pixels on digital cameras.

Even though the roots of modern technological miniaturization can be traced back to the space race and the need for smaller lighter component parts, I believe an earlier different miniaturization revolution happened that helped trigger the industrial revolution and kept us all more or less in time to our various modern busy schedules.

In this part of the history of electronic music, we’re going to look at this other mini-revolution (sic), which brought us the watch  and eventually our first portable music.

So lets quickly recap..

In our last installment, PART 10, we looked at the importance of the marketing of a technology and how even though the technology had been around for nearly 1000 years it needed proper exposure and a need to take hold..

We also discovered that clocks were made popular in Europe after being influenced and then adapted from the Catholic Monasteries, who used them in conjunction with one or more bells to mark the time for prayer. These loud distinct bells were used to communicate over a big distance.

We learned how these soon started to become musical in nature

Thus time and chimes were starting to become permanently fused together in mankind’s consciousness.

Incidentally, the word clock is actually derived from the Latin, clocca, which means bell. Before we called them clocks we called them horologes, in fact the first clocks of Europe didn’t actually have a face, the time was marked by the sound of the accompanying bells.  It was this way that time and chimes were entwined together, thus the newer mechanical Horologues were gradually given their new name.

Today the world’s oldest surviving clock face dates back to 1380, and can be found at Wells Cathedral in England. It shows the hours of the day, the motion of the sun as it passes through the sky and also the phases of the moon.

The clock’s big break technologically was the escapement mechanism, which actually looks to have been invented by Chinese engineer Su-Song somewhere around 1020. But as his invention relied on the use of flowing water, is not considered to be the first truly mechanical clock.

Back in Europe somewhere between 1280 and 1320 these water clocks started to be modified, achieving their power by the controlled use of falling weights connected to an oscillating mechanism. These escapement clocks are said to be the first mechanical clocks.

Freed from the confines of a water source/storage, the clock finally had the capacity to become smaller, and so began the long transformation of the shrinking clock.

In the 1400’s history has recorded a German wall clock, iron weights and gears drove it, with glass bells struck by small metal hammers.

The clock had become smaller, and so to had the Carillon. Mechanical music had come back indoors.

The miniaturization of clocks got another boost in 1510. A man named Peter Henlein of Nuremberg invented the spring powered clock. Using springs Peter was able to replace the heavy bulky drive weights of escapement clocks, this meant clocks could become smaller and now even portable.

Another aside: The spring was beginning to emerge as the portable power source of the next few hundred years.
In fact it’s ability to store kinetic energy, yet be so small, was such a wonder that it was not truly replaced as a portable power source until the advent of the battery.

Unfortunately for Peter’s invention, as the spring unwound the clock would run slower, until being wound again.

Also in the 16^th century in Cremona, Italy, Gianello dell Tour was charged to alleviate the boredom of emperor Charles V. His solution was a small mechanical flute player that walked either in a straight line or a circle while playing the lute and turning it’s head from side to side.

Adding to this, soldiers fought on tabletops, beat drums and blew trumpets.
What were the soldiers heralding?
The arrival of Miniaturized music that was accompanied by movement!

Made in 1598 this is the earliest known English musical domestic clock in existence.

The earliest domestic musical clock is created by Nicholas Vallin in 1598. It can be found in the British Museum London. It plays a different piece of music every 15 minutes.

All the early musical clocks played tunes on mini carillons of bells, and like it’s larger cousins, were driven by a rotating spiked drum.

On average, most of these clocks have between 2 to 7 tunes that are selectable via a dial.

Sometime in the late 1580’s the 20 year old brilliant physicist, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher Galileo Galilei noticed a lamp swinging overhead while visiting a cathedral. Interested in finding how long each direction took as the lamp  swung back and forth, he timed it using his pulse. Here Galileo made the first of many discoveries that cement him firmly in history as the father of modern science.

This young man discovered that the period of each swing was exactly the same.

Even though he begun serious investigations on this discovery in 1602, he didn’t have the idea that the pendulum could be used in clocks until 1641. By this time Galileo was the tender age of 77, blind and under house arrest after being charged with heresy for stating that the earth was not the center of the universe.

Galileo’s first biographer Vincenzo Viviani tells the story. As translated by Stillman Drake.

“One day in 1641, while I was living with him at his villa in Arcetri, I remember that the idea occurred to him that the pendulum could be adapted to clocks with weights or springs, serving in place of the usual tempo, he hoping that the very even and natural motions of the pendulum would correct all the defects in the art of clocks. But because his being deprived of sight prevented his making drawings and models to the desired effect, and his son Vincenzio coming one day from Florence to Arcetri, Galileo told him his idea and several discussions followed. Finally they decided on the scheme shown in the accompanying drawing, to be put in practice to learn the fact of those difficulties in machines which are usually not foreseen in simple theorizing.”

Unfortunately, both Galileo and his son Vencenzio died before completing the machine.

Fortunately Galileo’s legacy was alive and kicking (and still is today).

In 1656, 15 years after his death, Dutch astronomer and mathematician Christiaan Huygens, inspired by Galileo’s work on pendulums had a similar idea and invented the first Pendulum Clock.

This was a momentous leap in horology, as before the pendulum mechanism, clocks would lose or gain between 15 – 30 minutes a day. Now for the first time in history clocks would only lose around 1 minute, soon afterwards Christiaan improved the mechanism and it was reduced to just 10 seconds.
Not long afterward, almost all existing clocks were converted to run on pendulums.

Even before the invention of the pendulum mechanism, clocks were being used more and more often with a reasonably good accuracy, so a new improvement was needed, as such, in 1577, Jost Burgi invented the minute hand, but it too was plagued by problems. It was not until the pendulum was introduced that this new device was successfully incorporated into these new instruments.

This is where we’re going to leave our story for today.

Mechanical Music now had a perfect marketing mechanism, the clock. Used all day everyday, in many homes throughout the western world music was heard on this regular basis.

In our next installment we’re going to continue our story of how time and music became smaller, revolutionizing our world in it’s process.

Click Here For Part 12.

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