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Dear Herbert,

The problem of measuring "elapsed time"
was soleved in "antiquity" very well,
as I undrstand.
By means of "clepsydra, the water clock".
The sophisticated design of the water clocks
I've seen, suggests that they were capable to
measure time to the precision of less than 1 minute
per day, I suppose.
Unfortunately none of these survived,
and I know of no historians who seriously invetsigated
the question of their precision.
Any suggestions?

Alex.

On Sat, 30 Oct 2004, Herbert Prinz wrote:

> the REAL
> problem was to measure
> elapsed time between the celestial signals
> (eclipse phases, occultation,
> whatever) and the events that established local time (meridian
> transits). In antiquity, local time would more likely have been
> established by sun observation than from the stars.
> From the top of my
> head, Strabo acknowledges this, but I can't
> dig out the reference now.

   

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