Clock Towers of Waterbury

It is an indisputable fact that, of all the inventions and contrivances of man since the days of Adam, the clock is one of the most important and valuable. It ranks in the first class and well to the front of the class. In the days of advanced and progressive civilization, the clock is indispensable. When the world was young and the races of man primitive, little it mattered to mankind whether it was morning, noon or night. There were but two divisionos of the whole 24 hours, those of day and night. The primitive man used the day for eating and securing hist food. The night he used for sleeping. When it was light, the savage knew it was day and when the sun disappeared, he knew by experience that darkness and night were upon him.

So, for many centuries, mankind had no better clock than the sun by which they measured and separated day and night. When the sun was clouded, as it often was in those days, just as at present, the savage had no way to determine how the day was progressing. The first contrivance for measuring time was naturally the sun dial, an instrument dependent altogether on the light of the sun; accordingly, at night and when the King of Day was hidden by the clouds, the dial was worthless.

After the sun dial came the hour glass, the same invention which many a housewife has to-day for timing the boiling of eggs. The hour glass was an improvement on the sun dial, in that it could mark the duration of an hour at night as well as during the day, and in cloudy as well as fair weather. But the hour glass had its imprefections. It could not tell time accurately, and it required constant attention, for at the end of every hour, or when the sand had run from one bowl to the other, it must be turned at once or time would be lost.

King Alfred devised a good means of measuring time, when he made twelve candles so graduated that each would burn two hours. Another instrument known as the clepaydra, was an adaptation of the hour glass, but was run by water instead of by sand. It was a jar with a number of small holes at the bottom, through which the water escaped. It had to be filled every morning, and held enough water to last 24 hours. The sides of the jar were graduated so that by looking at the water line at any time, the hour, or fraction of hte hour, could be readily ascertained.

During the dark ages the clock was invented, by whom it is not known. The first clock mentioned in history was a very elaborate time-piece sent by Pope Paul I, to King Pepin, of France, in 760. From that time on the clock was gradually perfected, till in 1292 a large clock was placed in Canterbury cathedral and some years later in the abbey of St. Albans, Genoa, and at Westminster, one which struck the hours.

Since those times the "clock in the tower" has been very popular. Like a city set on a hill, a clock on a tower, be it church steeple or castle wall, can not well be hid. Many of the notable and historic towers of the world have clocks which toll the hours by day and by night, a solemn warning to the old and young that time is passing, and with it golden opportunities which can never be recalled.

For many years clock towers were not illumined, and there was no way of telling time by them at night unless the bells tolled off the hours. To-day, with improved methods, the result of the world's advancement, the clocks faces are brightly illumined so that the hands of the time-piece may be discerned at a considerable distance.

Every community to-day has its clock towers, which are a convenience and a blessing to the people. Waterbury has its quota and probably no institutions in the city are better known or more generally appreciated than the clocks on City hall, St John's church, the Washington school, and others. The Republican's artist thought that Waterbury people would like to see these public benefactors reproduced on paper and has accordingly made sketches of the best known clock towers of the city, as seen above.

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