Water clock (clepsydra)
Date
4 November 1685
Creator
Unknown, Artist
Object type
Archive reference number
Manuscript page number
p201
Material
Dimensions
height (page): 376mm
width (page): 238mm
width (page): 238mm
Subject
Content object
Description
A drawing of Denis Papin’s clepsydra (a water clock). At the meeting of the Royal Society on 4 November 1685, Denis Papin reported that he had constructed a clepsydra ‘in the manner of Monsieur Comier’.
The theologian and physician Claude Comiers (d. 1693) had designed a clepsydra, which he submitted to the Royal Academy of Sciences on 16 March 1669. His letter and drawing of the clepsydra are found in the papers of Christiaan Huygens, who was presumably asked to comment on the device (Christiaan Huygens, Œuvres Complètes (The Hague, 1895), vol. VI, 381-82 (no. 1714)). It was constructed by Hubin Emailler, who included a figure of it in his Machines Nouvellement executees en partie inventees par Hubin Emailler (Paris: J. Cusson, 1673). Comiers’s account was also produced in Journal des sçavans (11 May 1676), 97-103.
This is copied from the image at RBO/6/255a.
The theologian and physician Claude Comiers (d. 1693) had designed a clepsydra, which he submitted to the Royal Academy of Sciences on 16 March 1669. His letter and drawing of the clepsydra are found in the papers of Christiaan Huygens, who was presumably asked to comment on the device (Christiaan Huygens, Œuvres Complètes (The Hague, 1895), vol. VI, 381-82 (no. 1714)). It was constructed by Hubin Emailler, who included a figure of it in his Machines Nouvellement executees en partie inventees par Hubin Emailler (Paris: J. Cusson, 1673). Comiers’s account was also produced in Journal des sçavans (11 May 1676), 97-103.
This is copied from the image at RBO/6/255a.
Object history
At the meeting of the Royal Society on 4 November 1685, ‘Dr. Papin shewed how he had completed a clepsydra after the manner of Mons. Comiers. The glass being to run an eighth of an hour, was made to turn on an axis, the jet de’eau coming to it’s hight without shaking’ (Birch 4:427). (At Birch 4:427-28, an account of the clepsydra is introduced, but it is in fact an account of Papin's digester from 15 July 1685.)
Related fellows
Denis Papin (1647, French) , Natural philosopher
Associated place