Clock Face - Historical Development

Historical Development

Clocks existed before clock faces. The first mechanical clocks, built in 13th century Europe, were striking clocks: their purpose was to ring bells upon the canonical hours, to call the public to prayer. These were erected as tower clocks in public places, to ensure that the bells were audible. It was not until these mechanical clocks were in place that their creators realized that their wheels could be used to drive an indicator on a dial on the outside of the tower, where it could be widely seen.

Before the late 14th century, a fixed hand (often a carving shaped like a hand) indicated the hour by pointing to numbers on a rotating dial; after this time the current convention of a rotating hand on a fixed dial was adopted. Minute hands (so named because they indicated the small or minute divisions of the hour) only came into regular use around 1690, after the invention of the pendulum and anchor escapement increased the precision of time-telling enough to justify it. St John the Evangelist, Groombridge, Kent, has a fine example of a clock with only an hour hand. In some precision clocks a third hand, which rotated once a minute, was added in a separate subdial. This was called the 'second-minute' hand (because it measured the secondary minute divisions of the hour), which was shortened to 'second' hand. The convention of the hands moving clockwise evolved in imitation of the sundial. In the Northern hemisphere, where the clock face originated, the shadow of the gnomon on a horizontal sundial moves clockwise during the day. This was also why noon or 12 o'clock was conventionally located at the top of the dial.