Nancy Caciola wrote:
>
> ...I was idly wondering when hours came to be fixed in length,...
Monks had used water-timer devices to set alarms to awaken themselves
for Matins up until around the mid-15th c. when mechanical clocks
(glocken) came into wider use. By the mid-16th c. their accuracy had
greatly improved leading to community clocks in the larger towns. In
this period people commonly began to reckon time with fixed-length hours
"of the clock" or o'clock rather than "of the day" or "of the night,"
and daylight alarms signaled the beginning and ending of work periods.
Prayers at the ninth hour of the day (originally at 3:00 p.m.) called
"Nones" started earlier and earlier, because these prayers ended the
physical work day and led to the large meal before retiring to read and
other indoor evening activities. By the time the mechanical clocks
caught on, nones (or noon) began at about mid-day, so today we refer to
the daylight meridian as "high noon." We now consider noon a break and
return to work afterwards. If our work-day had begun at 4:00 a.m., as it
often did back then, we might be more likely to quit in the early "after
- noon."
> Also, is the original variable-length hour in continuity with Roman custom?
Actually pre-Roman by many centuries.
Regards,
Chuck Blatchley
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