than two centuries from the time of de Dondi one may
see a spectacular process of degeneration or devolution. Not only is de
Dondi's the earliest clock of which we have a full and trustworthy
account, it is also far more complicated than any other (see figs. 1, 2)
until comparatively modern times! Moreover, it was not an exceptional
freak. There were others like it, and one cannot therefore reject as
accidental this process of degeneration that occurs at the very
beginning of the certain history of the mechanical clock in Europe.

On the basis of such evidence I have suggested elsewhere[9] that the
clock is "nought but a fallen angel from the world of astronomy." The
first great clocks of medieval Europe were designed as astronomical
showpieces, full of complicated gearing and dials to show the motions of
the Sun, Moon and planets, to exhibit eclipses, and to carry through the
involved computations of the ecclesiastical calendar. As such they were
comparable to the orreries of the 18th century and to modern
planetariums; that they also showed the time and rang it on bells was
almost incidental to their main function. One must not neglect, too,
that it was in their glorification of the rationality of the cosmos that
they had their greatest effect. Through milleniums of civilization,
man's understanding of celestial phenomena had been the very pinnacle of
his intellect, and then as now popular exhibition of this sort was just
as necessary, as striking, and as impressive. One does not have to go
far to see how the paraphernalia of these early great astronomical
clocks had great influence on philosophers and theologians and on poets
such as Dante.

It is the thesis of this part of my argument that the ordinary
time-telling clock is no affiliate of the other simple time-telling
devices such as sundials, sand glasses and the elementary water clocks.
Rather it should be considered as a degenerate branch from the main stem
of mechanized astronomical devices (I shall call them protoclocks), a
stem which can boast a continuous history filling the gap between the
appearance of simple gearing and the complications of de Dondi. We shall
return to the discussion of this main stem after analyzing the very
recently discovered parallel stem from medieval China, which reproduced
the same evolution of mechanized astronomical devices and incidental
time telling. Of the greatest significance, this stem reveals the
crucial independent inve