In the age of omnipresent high-tech digital gadgetry, mechanical clocks are often (mistakenly) taken for granted. It’s sometimes easy to forget these everyday devices were once considered state-of-the-art technological wonders. Beginning in the mid-17th century, for example, European missionaries visiting China’s Qing dynasty regularly presented intricately engineered, astonishingly ornate musical timepieces to emperors as gifts meant to impress their hosts. These zimingzhong, Mandarin Chinese for “bells that ring themselves,” eventually numbered in the hundreds and were displayed in Beijing’s Forbidden City palace—not only as symbols of opulence, but as tools to accurately track celestial events such as eclipses.
[Related: A brief, 20,000-year history of timekeeping.]
Popular Science is an American digital magazine carrying popular science content, which refers to articles for the general reader on science and technology subjects.
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