A Dance to the Music of Time, by Nicolas Poussin, c. 1635.

A Dance to the Music of Time, by Nicolas Poussin, c. 1635. Wallace Collection, London.

Time

Volume VII, Number 4 | fall 2014

Purchase

VIEW:

Filter

Miscellany

Along with an elephant whose name in Arabic meant “the father of intelligence,” Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid presented Holy Roman emperor Charlemagne with a mechanical clock powered by water in 807. At noon a weight dropped, bells sounded, and twelve brass horsemen emerged from twelve windows.

The celestial machine is to be likened not to a divine organism but rather to a clockwork.

—Johannes Kepler, 1605
Purchase