I wish to do my thanks to Frank King for writing my paper about the Italian Hours in the clocks. I was the first author, on 1990, to show the real "secret" of the mechanical clock with only I-IIII and/or I-IV roman numeration of hours. The quadrant of Paolo Uccello in Firenze is the origin of this method. It shown the first mechanical clocks for the italian hours with a inverse numeration from 1 to 24. Thankf to Frsnk for remember my paper and my web page about this. Nicola Severino
----- Original Message ----- From: "Frank King" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Willy Leenders" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: "Sundial List" <sundial@rrz.uni-koeln.de>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, September 30, 2005 6:58 PM Subject: Re: Firenze clock > Dear Willy, > > It is hard to find definitive information about clocks which > show Italian hours. A number survive in Italy mostly in the > Rome area. What I write now should not be taken as wholly > reliable! > > Napoleon wanted French time everywhere of course and most > Italian hours clocks were changed during his era. Papal > influence in the Rome area meant that a few Italian hours > clocks escaped Napoleon's attention! > > The date given for the Paolo Uccello clock is 1443 and > you can be fairly sure that such a clock would be a very > poor timekeeper compared with clocks today. The typical > daily error would greatly exceed the difference in time > of sunset from one day to the next so there would be no > need for any special mechanism. > > Clocks of that period would have to be reset frequently, > using a sundial of course, and you could choose to set > it to Italian hours or French hours as you wished. > > Of course, the clock weights were probably wound daily > anyway (and in early clocks the winding process stopped > power to the clock thereby contributing further to the > errors) so the added task of resetting the clock was > hardly a great one. > > As clock time-keeping improved, the daily error reduced > and, by the Napoleonic era, the effort of resetting an > Italian hours clock daily would have started to seem a > little irksome. I believe some of these later clocks > (18th century) did have special mechanisms but they > were pretty crude. > > I can imagine clock-keepers being quite grateful to > Napoleon! > > There is an interesting paper by Nicola Severino on > Italian hours clocks: `Le Ore Italiche... Perdute!' > Also, have a look at his web page... > > http://www.nicolaseverino.it/orologio%20italiano.htm > > You will some pictures of Italian hours clocks (I > took a couple of them myself). The majority of these > clocks have dials running I, II, III, IIII, V and VI. > The single hand turns about four times a day if you > are lucky. > > I don't know of ANY that remotely keep to Italian > hours time today and most are in a very poor state > of preservation. > > Frank H. King > Cambridge, U.K. > > - -
