Thus, it mattered not at all to the medieval world that Archimedes, the great Greek scientist and engineer—who, however, chanced to live in the Greek colony of Sicily—was able, somewhere about 200 B. C., to construct a system of revolving spheres which reproduced the motion of the heavenly bodies. Such a machine must necessarily have involved some sort of clock-work. We dare not stop to consider Archimedes, lest we stray too far from our subject, but this marvelous man of ancient times, the Benjamin Franklin of his day, seems to have had a hand in almost every sort of mechanical and scientific research, from discovering the principle of specific gravity, in order to checkmate a dishonest goldsmith, to destroying Roman war-ships by means of his scientific "engines." The story is told that he set the ships on fire by concentrating upon them the rays of the sun from a number of concave mirrors. And, although this story may not be true, the things that he is known to have done are extraordinary. Archimedes and his knowledge had long passed away when the monastery clocks of the eleventh century began to sound the hour. These were the fruit of a crude new civilization just struggling for expression, and represented the general period when William the Conqueror led his Norman army into England. CHAPTER SEVEN _The Modern Clock and Its Creators_ We learn that toward the close of the thirteenth century a clock was set up in St. Paul's Cathedral in London (1286); one in Westminster, by 1288; and one in Canterbury Cathedral, by 1292. The Westminster clock and the chime of bells were put up from funds raised by a fine imposed on a chief justice who had offended the government. The clock bore as an inscription the words of Virgil: "_Discite justitiam moniti_," "Learn justice from my advice," and the bells were gambled away by Henry VIII! In the same century, Dante, whose wonderful poem the _Commedia_, (the _Inferno_, _Purgatory_ and _Paradise_) is sometimes called the "Swan Song of the Middle Ages," since it marks the passing of the medieval times, spoke of "wheels that wound their circle in an orloge." Chaucer speaks of a cock crowing as regularly "as a _clock_ in an abbey orloge." And this shows, curiously, the early meaning of the word, for by the word "clock," Chaucer evidently meant the _bell_ which struck the hour, and, very obviously, he used the word "orloge" to indicate the clock itself. Many of these "clocks" had neither dials nor hands. They told time only by striking the hour. Sometimes in the great tower clocks there were placed automatic figures representing men in armor or even mere grotesque figures which, at the right moment, beat upon the bell. These figures were called "jacks o' the clock" or "jacquemarts" and curious specimens of them are still in existence.