Josh Clark

There was also beer brewing time.

And so these early clocks, using the virgin foliate mechanism and weights, they help keep the monks on track.

Monks are associated with churches.

So very soon after that, churches started keeping clocks as well.

And fun fact, one of the reasons that churches often have very, very tall steeples, often with bells on top, is because those used to be parts of the clock.

To run a clock so big that it can ring that bell, you need to have very heavy weights that are coming and descending from a very high place.

Yeah, for sure.

Nice little factoid there.

I love that one.

And the oldest surviving mechanical clock is in a church.

It was built for the Salisbury Cathedral.

That was in 1386.

But these clocks didn't have a face yet.

It was still, you know, like ringing a bell kind of thing to know what time it was.

And in fact, the word clock comes from the French word.

Is it cloche, I guess?

Like that glass thing dome you put over stuff.

Yeah, which is a bell.

But, you know, it wasn't too long after that that they said, hey, if we can have a clock turning gears, how hard would it be to actually put a sundial kind of like thing on the front of it and turn the gears of a hand so people could actually see what time it was?

And they went, not that hard.