Jim Regan - Site Reviews
Clockworks
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You might think it would be difficult to measure something that doesn't actually...exist -- or, as some would claim, only exists because of our attempts to measure it. (If a watch stops in the forest...?)
But we've been doing just that with time for at least 3500 years. Of course, since that time, the methods of measuring time have changed, as well as exactly what those methods are measuring. Seconds are only a few hundred years old -- and aren't even the seconds that seconds were 30-odd years ago. In other words, over time, the times have changed, and if you want to review the changes, Clockworks is a good place to start.
A creation of Britannica.com, Clockworks could be best classified as an edutainment site -- someone making a serious study of the 'history' of time will go elsewhere, but for the rest of us, there is more than enough to slightly increase our knowledge base and provide some little known facts with which we can annoy our friends. (An example: Since sundials measure a constant number of hours between sunrise and sunset, and since the length of days varies with the seasons, daytime hours in the ancient world were longer during summer than during winter.)
After a splash page, Clockworks welcomes visitors with a Shockwave introduction/entry-point to the exhibit, and a separate link to the essay, Measuring Time.
The exhibit itself takes the visitor from the Sundials and Clepsydra (water clocks) of more than 3000 years ago, through the Candle Clocks, (which could also serve as alarm clocks) Sandglasses, Weight-, Spring-, and Pendulum-Driven Clocks of more recent history, to the Quartz and Atomic timepieces in use today. Each of these inventions are given a few pages of background and explanation, with QuickTime animations to demonstrate the actual operation of most models. (A bit unnecessary for the hourglass, but essential to make sense of the waterclock.) The more intricate workings of the mechanical clocks are illustrated with both high- and low-speed animations.
Measuring Time examines not only the history of hours and seconds, but also the evolution of Calendars. Its only a brief treatment, but seekers of knowledge about the 'bigger picture' can find more details at Calendars Through the Ages, which moves the focus from the micro to the macro -- and from the arbitrary to the more intuitive.
That's not to say that calendars never had an element of the arbitrary to them -- while most calendrical components are based on observable, natural cycles, (days, months, seasons and years) there's still room for the individual touch. The French Revolutionary Calendar abandoned the 7-day week, and divided its months into three décades of 10 days each - a system which left 5 or 6 days as surplus every year. (This revolutionary devotion to metric also found its way into timekeeping, and each day was divided into ten hours of a hundred minutes of a hundred seconds, for a total of 100,000 seconds per day.)
Other calendars examined and explained include Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Chinese and Mayan. Various concepts and histories of Weeks (the 7-day week is surprisingly common) and Years are given their own treatments, and the site is rounded out with a "Timeline" -- actually a list of such facts as the earliest known recorded date, (4236 B.C.E., the founding of the Egyptian calendar) and the length of the 'longest year' (445 days, during 45 B.C.E., known appropriately as the "Year of Confusion").
So, will this newfound knowledge help us to better understand what (or if) time is? Perhaps not. As St. Augustine wrote, "If no one asks me, I know: If I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I know not..." But if you really need a quick explanation of the mystery, may I suggest, "Time is the thing that keeps everything from happening at once." In the meantime...
Clockworks can be found at http://www.britannica.com/clockworks/index.html. Calendars Through the Ages can be found at http://www.webexhibits.com/calendars/.
Jim Regan provides 'Today's Links' to the e-Monitor. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.