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Water clock

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For the individual water clock at The Children's
Museum of Indianapolis, see Water clock
(Indianapolis).
This article is missing information
about contrasting descriptions of
different types of water
clocks. Please expand the article to
include this information. Further
details may exist on the talk
page. (December 2015)

A display of two outflow water clocks from the


Ancient Agora Museum in Athens. The top is an
original from the late 5th century BC. The
bottom is a reconstruction of a clay original.
A water
clock or clepsydra (Greek κλεψύδρα from
κλέπτειν kleptein, 'to steal'; ὕδωρ hydor, 'water')
is any timeecepi in which time is measured by
the regulated flow of liquid into (inflow type) or
out from (outflow type) a vessel where the
amount is then measured.
Water clocks are some of the oldest time-
measuring instruments.[1] Where and when they
were first invented is not known, and given their
great antiquity it may never be. The bowl-
shaped outflow is the simplest form of a water
clock and is known to have existed
in Babylon and in Egypt around the 16th
century BCE. Other regions of the world,
including India and China, also have early
evidence of water clocks, but the earliest dates
are less certain. Some authors, however, claim
that water clocks appeared in China as early as
4000 BCE.[2]
Some modern timepieces are called "water
clocks" but work differently from the ancient
ones. Their timekeeping is governed by
a pendulum, but they use water for other
purposes, such as providing the power needed
to drive the clock by using a water wheel or
something similar, or by having water in their
displays.
The Greeks and Romans advanced water clock
design to include the inflow clepsydra with an
early feedback system, gearing,
and escapement mechanism, which were
connected to fanciful automata and resulted in
improved accuracy. Further advances were
made in Byzantium, Syria and Mesopotamia,
where increasingly accurate water clocks
incorporated complex segmental and epicyclic
gearing, water wheels, and programmability,
advances which eventually made their way
to Europe. Independently, the Chinese
developed their own advanced water clocks,
incorporating gears, escapement mechanisms,
and water wheels, passing their ideas on
to Korea and Japan[citation needed].
Some water clock designs were developed
independently and some knowledge was
transferred through the spread of trade. These
early water clocks were calibrated with
a sundial. While never reaching a level of
accuracy comparable to today's standards of
timekeeping, the water clock was the most
accurate and commonly used timekeeping
device for millennia, until it was replaced by
more accurate pendulum clocks in 17th-century
Europe.
A water clock uses a flow of water to measure
time. If viscosity is neglected, the physical
principle required to study such clocks
is Torricelli's law. There are two types of water
clocks: inflow and outflow. In an outflow water
clock, a container is filled with water, and the
water is drained slowly and evenly out of the
container. This container has markings that are
used to show the passage of time. As the water
leaves the container, an observer can see
where the water is level with the lines and tell
how much time has passed. An inflow water
clock works in basically the same way, except
instead of flowing out of the container, the water
is filling up the marked container. As the
container fills, the observer can see where the
water meets the lines and tell how much time
has passed.

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