Q: Where Did Bilbo Get His Clock?
ANSWER: This question occasionally stirs up debate and speculation among J.R.R. Tolkien’s fans, and someone asked it of me a few months ago. Although I am sure the reference is to the clock on the mantel-piece, where various notes and letters are left throughout the books, there are other clocks in Bag End. And at one point in The Lord of the Rings Sam mentions “clocks in the Shire”. The history of clocks is not something I am deeply familiar with so I set the question aside until I could do some research. As it turns out, one need not look far to find a few pertinent facts, such as:
- Tolkien only mentions clocks in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings
- There is apparently no Elvish word for “clock”
- And clocks have been used for thousands of years
That last fact is not something that was at the top of my mind; and some people will be quick to point out that what we think of as clocks (prior to modern digital clocks) is a mechanical design that was developed in Europe in the 1300s. Amazingly, though, the clock face was invented by the Greeks around 325 BCE. So whereas most people would assume that Bilbo’s clock might be styled on a medieval device, Tolkien’s lack of description for many clocks in Middle-earth means the reader is free to infer a design ranging anywhere from 325 BCE to 1935-ish (a period of about 2260 years). But let’s back up here for a moment.
The earliest known time-keeping devices appear to have been sundials. That does not mean there were earlier devices; it only means that the most ancient intra-day time measuring tools we have identified through archaeology or literature are ancient sundials. They were most likely invented far in the past in prehistoric times and the story of their origins is lost to posterity.
The Greeks, however, were not satisfied with water bowl clocks, so they devised a series of improvements in the concept that we know collectively today as clepsydrae (“water thieves”). Plato introduced water clocks (clepsydrae) to Greece after visiting Egypt. He devised an alarm clock to wake his students. It involved allowing a container to fill up with water over night until it spilled over, dropping lead balls onto a copper platter. The 325 BCE-era clepsydrae used conical receptacles, included bells and/or gongs, and had little doors that allowed figures to emerge. These water clocks were very accurate (as well as elaborate).
The Greeks and Chinese developed water-powered escapements, which were used to control mechanical processes. What happened around the year 1300 CE is that a true mechanical escapement was developed, thus freeing clocks from the use of water. Now they could be powered by springs or suspended weights. Some modern retrostyle clocks (especially old-fashioned “grandfather” clocks) still use mechanical escapements, although these designs are retained for nostalgic purposes. People just love the intricate designs of those old clocks.
The word clock itself can be traced back to a Medieval Latin word, clocca (“bell”), which may itself have been borrowed from Irish. Ancient clocks were used in important government buildings but the Greeks and Romans appear to have built clock towers that used sundials and water clocks to tell the time. Athens’ Tower of the Winds included a wind-vane as well as the sundials and water clock. A bell was added to the tower by the time of the early Byzantine period.
J.R.R. Tolkien mentioned bells many times in his stories; in fact, bells were used for time-keeping in Rivendell and Minas Tirith. We can deduce that Tolkien probably imagined the use of clocks throughout Middle-earth, not merely in the Shire. The quite ancient tradition of clock-making in our history thus justifies the inclusion of clocks in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, for though most people believe that Middle-earth is styled on Medieval Europe, Tolkien really borrowed concepts that were used from classical antiquity up through modern times; Middle-earth’s clocks therefore don’t require explanation or description, for they can be of varied designs and sophistication.
Some Websites say the clocks are anachronisms. In fact, nearly everything mentioned in the stories is anachronistic because the stories are supposedly set thousands of years in the past, well before iron swords and chain mail and sophisticated architecture were developed by the classical Mediterranean and Asian civilizations.
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Some people have speculated that the clock near Bilbo’s front door is actually a barometer.
I have the impression that Tolkien wanted the Shire to have a pseudo-20th century atmosphere, perhaps in order to make it feel familiar to the reader. Thus modern clocks, umbrellas, potatoes, etc. As the characters travel away from the Shire, that atmosphere falls away.
Yes. In fact, the illustration of Bilbo in Bag End (from which I took the two images in the article) is one that Tolkien made for The Hobbit when it was published, so it predates the Middle-earth mythology. One has to wonder what he would have done about that illustration had he been asked to update them for a later edition.
Interesting, I haven’t seen that illustration, I too am curious what would Tolkien said if he was ever asked about that matter hehe. Well there is many mundane things that appear to be present in some way or another, for example window with glass panes, we know that Tom Bombadil house has them and probably hobbit holes and houses in Shire and Bree, there are of course references to windows in Minas Tirith and shutters being in use but no word on panes, only poem Main in the Moon Came Down too Soon also mentions panes in a city that supposedly is Dol Amroth (reference to Sea-ward Tower and Bay of Belfalas) of windows in Meduseld in Edoras we know explicitly that they were unglazed and only slits, as Tolkien wrote in one letter he enriched the culture of Rohirrim but he did not gave such things as glass windows to a great Hall that has similarities to structures we hear in northern sagas :). Much is also left unknown for example whether Minas Tirith has sewage system, which I think would be needed and the level of numenorean knowledge of engineering would probably allow for both sewage and water transportation system (they have fountains that splash water high in the air so they know how to use water pressure) and maybe also glass panes (I heard there were already some of them in ancient Rome), similarly maybe the clocks could be some achievement of dwarven craft, who are the most fitting in developping devices and complicated machinery, but not crossing the point of industralization :). But as you said such a rationalization would be required for every aspect of life in Middle Earth hehe.
As a bit of an aside, I’ve often wondered about Lothlorien’s sewage system. Even Galadriel and Celeborn produce bodily waste, right? Maybe not every part of Lothlorien was magical and wondrous. I never submitted this question to Mr Martinez, maybe because I was afraid the answer would be, “Tolkien never described Lothlorien’s sewage, or elvish sewage in general, so you are free to speculate, and also you should seek counseling.”
It’s likely the Dwarves invented mechanical clocks early. Escapements aren’t complicated to make, and sundials don’t work underground. Whether they made them in quantity for trade I have no idea.
As for windows, glass windows seem to have been primarily for illumination for at least the first thousand years:
“The Romans were the first known to use glass for windows, a technology likely first produced in Roman Egypt—In Alexandria ca. 100 AD, cast glass windows, albeit with poor optical properties, began to appear—but these were small thick productions, little more than blown glass jars (cylindrical shapes) flattened out into sheets with circular striation patterns throughout. It would be over a millennium before a window glass became transparent enough to see through clearly, as we think of it now.” – Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window
Plate glass, and large panes, are basically a 20th century invention, although, like escapements, the technology isn’t complicated, and the Dwarves could have made it.
So we have to ask how many Middle Earth glass windows were for looking through, and how many were for illumination.
I favour a dwarf origin too! Who knows, there may even be a Valar connection via Aule. And throughout history, things have been forgotten only to be re-invented or found again (perhaps not the mobile phone though). It seems we are constantly pushing back the date for inventions and finding that the ancients were every be as clever as we are, they just did not have the same accumulated knowledge.
PS: Aule was known to keep a few secrets – like the creation of the dwarfs. Perhaps he did not tell the elves about clocks either 😉
“When they reached The Green Dragon, the last house on the Hobbiton side, now lifeless and with broken windows…” (The Scouring of the Shire)
And if it was thought wise to insert windows into a public house (a.k.a. pub for non-UK readers) — where high spirits and a good brew on a Highday night might have put them in danger of breakage — it is surely reasonable to suppose that glass windows were standard in dwellings of whatever kind.
At the risk of an accusation of heresy, crossing the Brandywine (or maybe the High Hey?) has always seemed to me analogous to stepping through the CS Lewis’s Wardrobe.
The hobbits leave behind a normal, cosily Victorian world, possessing not only timepieces but tobacco, potatoes, a regular postal system… “in fact more or less a Warwickshire village of about the period of the Diamond Jubilee” (JRRT, Letter 178).
They step back into both time and various alternative cultures, none of which appears to command the elegancies of life which hobbits (and JRRT) clearly take for granted. Including clocks and windows.
Heheh I see a discussion sparked from my comment haha. Well as Tolkien wrote in one fragment of (unsent) letter about magic is that people in Middle Earth lived mainly by ordinary means, they had crafts, arts, technologies, tools and some sort of machinery to build civilization. We know that Sauron and Morgoth and Saruman were concerned with machinery in it’s evil, destructive, possessive, industrial way with chemicals, lots of waste, efficient but dirty in operation, machines of wheels and metal as Treebeard would put it. The Hobbits were generally not fond of (or made themselves though they were skilled craftsmen and made very good tools) machines more complicated than forge-bellow, watermill or handloom as Prologue of Lotr tells us, and we know that they learned much of their craft of building either from Dunedain or Noldor Elves who always delighted in teaching less sophisticated peoples and were teachers of men in the past, with some touches of devices of Dwarves who are masters of craft of building too, or those invented by Hobbits themselves. Hobbits after all in their wandering days were more primitive, they even learned letters also from Dunedain (and from then on some of the educated hobbits were studying and writing books, gathering records from Elves or Dwarves or Men, though at first as a whole had little interest in sciences 🙂 ).
This material sphere of life is intriguing since well it contributes to the realism of this imaginary world :). We don’t know much about dwarven technology, only we know general truth that ”not even furnaces and anvils of the Dwarves would harm the One Ring” which implies that they might be the most advanced, they would probably have huge furnaces, great steelworks, and equipment for their work like ladles in foundries, some sort of machinery or special techniques for mining like hydraulic mining for carving huge underground halls or processing ore, transporting refuse, cranes, we are also told that they use masks with visors for the shielding of the eyes in their forges (from which similar in design are also dwarven helmets with masks 🙂 for a race so good withstanding heat and fire this might mean they can achieve really high temperatures in their forges, really powerful furnaces). Numenoreans were advanced in shipbuilding, making ever greater ships, who knows maybe so huge like XVI or XVII century sailing ships, ocean going vessels 🙂 (though certainly oars also remained in use 🙂 that’s just speculation but after all it is mentioned that ”tall ships” came to port in Osgiliath, maybe it’s simply such set of words but ‘tall ship’ indicates your stereotypical great sailing vessels used by explorers in our past), they were also great engineers, building magnificent structures on massive scale, giant bridges that could support houses and towers on them, spanning cast expense of a really wide rivers (Anduin and Gwathlo appear to be like many real world rivers of great width). Also when Sauron was in Numenor we are told that using his knowledge they ”devised engines” and I always wodnered what exactly that means. They too would be reasonably be able to use cranes or other machinery for loading and unloading cargo on their ships in ports, or in their building they would use something more than simply tools of iron for shaping stone and masonry, they transported blocks of stone from quarries by wains or sleighs and must have known some techniques for efficient work.
Along with this there is always this ‘magical’ aspect, for Elves and Dwarves at least who can make magical artifacts, but Dunedain appear to be able to put some sort of spells or ‘wizardry’ in their works too.
I wonder if the Numenoreans stuck with sails and oars for practical reasons? Numenor was primarily a volcanic island, and probably didn’t have much coal or oil, similar to Japan. As there wasn’t a convenient supplier to import fossil fuels from, and the ocean wasn’t that wide, sails would be the most practical power source.
They could still have used wood or alcohol fuels for smaller engines, allowing powered machinery where it would be most useful, but even on land, if one isn’t in a hurry, foot or horse works fine. And, after their return to Middle Earth, technological transport would have faced continual disruptions due to enemy actions. Railroads and motor vehicles can’t go around damaged tracks and roads the way a horse can.
For what it’s worth, Crete had flush toilets over 3000 years ago. True, they flushed with a bucket, but the sewers worked just fine. So sewer systems wouldn’t be unusual in Middle Earth-level civilizations, and a septic tank isn’t hard to build. For that matter, a few acres of healthy wetland can treat the sewage of a small village, with no infrastructure beyond the sewer pipes.
For what is worth, in English the word “engine” was used for warfare devices almost exclusively (if not entirely so) up until the 1700s, when the industrial revolution introduced many devices for converting energy to work/mechanical power.
Hmm I’m interested though whether the Numenor’s civilization would be able to make the famous ‘ancient automata’ like similar from Greece, complex mechenical devices, maybe this could also be related to the use of word in this passage in Akallabeth, though siege engines are implied to be present in Gondor so Numenor at some point must have devised them too 🙂 though we are only told that ”great engines for the casting of missiles” were more effective in bad guy’s hands and ”There were none upon the City walls large enough to reach so far or to stay the work” but that implies I think that there were some sort of siege engines in Minas Tirith but not powerful enough, and later on when army stands before Morannon the Army of the West realizes that they could not take it by assault ”not even if it had brought thither engines of great power” which I think is saying that the gondorians could have use siege engines (it is reasonable to assume that Gondor in it’s imperial glory in many wars would organize many sieges in it’s time, I think that even once they laid siege to Umbar).
From Dictionary.com: The origins of “engine”.
“1250-1300; Middle English engin < Anglo-French, Old French < Latin ingenium nature, innate quality, especially mental power, hence a clever invention, equivalent to in- in-2 + -genium, equivalent to gen- begetting (see kin) + -ium -ium"
Which sounds like it could have been applied to almost anything of the Elves, probably the Dwarves, and many Men and Hobbits. Even the Orcs were capable of "clever inventions", if not "good" ones.
However, I agree that it seems to have been most commonly used for "engines of war", maybe because that's where the cleverest inventors ended up working, willingly or not. Or because that's where most of the machines were, civilian life depending on direct human or animal muscle power, probably because it was simpler and cheaper.