Harrison Clock
The Harrison clock was perhaps the most important mechanical clock ever made. It flipped the use of clocks from telling time to telling location. The principles are still used in modern GPS systems.
Paleo Lettering
A related project to this Bible Clocks website has a main website at Paleo.In. Our name for a high-precision version of the Phoenician Alphabet is Paleo, thus the domain name.
We believe this to be the alphabet used to write inspired scripture. That alphabet having been replaced at various points in history.
Those letters have considerable design built into them. The letter in that alphabet that goes with the number 7 is the letter we call Jo. It is drawn like the capital I in Latin. In Latin is still has the J sound. Indeed Paleo Jo and Latin I are the same letter.
Paleo Jo also went another direction. It eventually became the numeral 7. How? By loosing the bottom cross member and by tipping the central spine.
Each letter in that alphabet has a meaning. The spelling of words thus informs the meaning of words. That Jo letter is a picture of a balance. It represents all sorts of accurate measurements. One of the things that is measured by that letter is time.
The point at the top of a Bible Clock has the number 7 on it. This is not an accident. The design of the O' Day system of measuring hours is in built by inspiration around the order of the hours of the day. The Parable Of the Workers is cracked in part by using the meaning of the letters for each hour in the day.
So the Jo letter, or when the sun is highest in the sky, is the point in time in the day where time is measured and clocks are set. We call that special moment in time in the day noon.
Noon
Noon is important for both time keeping and navigation. Sailors have long used high noon to use their sextants to learn their distance from the equator.
For most of history sailors had no way to learn their distance east and west around the globe. The problem is the globe is constantly rotating and the sun constantly moving. Outside of sighting land, there is no reference to use for determining location.
In the early 1700s the British Navy offered a prize to anyone who could figure out how to measure distance east and west around the globe. This was important because lives could be saved if this problem could be solved.
Theoretical Solution
Clocks could be used to solve this problem. Imagine measuring high noon at any place around the globe, already done by sailors, and then asking what time it was back at Greenwich.
The difference in time is also a difference in distance. Time and distance are different aspects of the same thing.
A carpenter, turned clock maker, turned watch maker, would eventually solve this problem. How? By setting a clock at Greenwich, and then keeping it running accurately for months, wherever a ship might sail.
This required making a clock that was more accurate than any clock ever produced. It would also need to rugged enough to survive the rocking of boats at sea.
In our list of important uses of clocks, this reverse use, where time was now used to determine location, goes down as a fundamental use of time itself.
Devices that tell time this accurately are given a special name, Chronometers.
This same strategy, of using time measured against a distant reference, is behind many other prophetic uses of time. See Bible Time for more on that.
Documentary
The following is a documentary that explains navigational problem faced by the British Navy. It explains how that problem was solved by John Harrison's famous Clock.
This documentary also explains how the same trick is used by modern GPS systems to tell location by listening to different but accurate clocks located in the sky.
The next important advancement in modern time keeping is the standardization of time by region. This was done in part because of the needs of railroads. We turn there next.