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Mechanical Clock

Mechanical Clock

Prerequisites

Requires:

• Mechanical Power
• Paper Currency

Statistics

Gives:

• City Clock

Gameplay

The development of mechanics enables Cities to build City Clocks. They improve City Gold by helping to regulate commerce and industry throughout the City.

Historical

Sundials were used in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome to tell time. Their accuracy was such that the Romans simply divided the day into 12 segments from dawn to dusk, so that the length of their ’hour’ varied from day to day! Between the 8th and 11th centuries AD Chinese artisans like Su Sung perfected the water clock, a mechanical timepiece powered by falling water. Su Sung’s masterpiece, the Kaifeng Clock of 1090 AD, was several stories tall and took up the center of the town square in Kaifeng. Su Sung also built a purely mechanical clock, called the "Cosmic Engine", but it required a full-time mechanic to keep it operating. In 1275 AD, looking for a method to time the numerous prayers in his day, a European monk built the first reliable mechanical clock. By the 1360s mechanical clocks with iron parts showing the hourly time, moon and zodiac times, were being built in town hall towers all over Europe. These centralized civic timepieces brought new regularity to the workday and increased the general efficiency of livelihood in the industrial and commercial sectors.