(^48) THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS
take it for granted. Yet Lewis Mumford quite correctly called it "the
key-machine."^6
Before the invention of this machine, people told time by sun
(shadow sticks or dials) and water clocks. Sun clocks worked of course
only on clear days; water clocks misbehaved when the temperature fell
toward freezing, to say nothing of long-run drift as a result of sedi-
mentation and clogging. Both of these devices served reasonably well
in sunny climes; but north of the Alps one can go weeks without see-
ing the sun, while temperatures vary not only seasonally but from day
to night.
Medieval Europe gave new importance to reliable time. The Church
first, with its seven daily prayer offices, one of which, matins, was in
spite of its name a nocturnal rite and required an alarm arrangement to
wake clerics before dawn. (Hence our children's round, Frère Jacques:
Brother Jacques has overslept and failed to sound the bells for
matins.)* And then the new cities and towns had their temporal servi-
tudes. Squeezed by their walls, they had to know and order time in
order to organize collective activity and ration space. They set a time
to wake, to go to work, to open the market, close the market, leave
work, and finally a time to put out fires ( couvre-feu gives us our word
"curfew") and go to sleep.
All of this was compatible with the older devices so long as there was
only one authoritative timekeeper; but with urban growth and the
multiplication of time signals, discrepancy brought discord and strife.
Society needed a more dependable instrument of time measurement
and found it in the mechanical clock.
We do not know who invented this machine or where. It seems to
have appeared in Italy and England (perhaps simultaneous invention)
in the last quarter of the thirteenth century. Once known, it spread
rapidly, driving out the water clocks; but not solar dials, which were
needed to check the new machines against the timekeeper of last resort.
These early versions were rudimentary, inaccurate, and prone to break-
down—so much so that it paid to buy a clockmaker along with the
clock.
Ironically, the new machine tended to undermine ecclesiastical au-
thority. Although Church ritual had sustained an interest in timekeep-
- The English and German versions of the verse (and maybe others) traduce the
meaning by saying that "morning bells are ringing." The point is, they are not ring-
ing.