The Steampunk Clocks of Nineteenth-Century Paris: Uncover the Ingenious System That Revolutionized Timekeeping within the Eighties

A mid­dle-class Parisian liv­ing across the flip of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry must bud­get for ser­vices like not simply water or fuel, but additionally time. Although elec­tric clocks had been demon­strat­ed, they had been nonetheless a high-tech rar­i­ty; putting in one within the residence would have been com­plete­ly out of the ques­tion. If you would like­ed to syn­chro­nize time­preserve­ing throughout a whole main metropolis, it made extra sense to make use of a confirmed, reli­in a position, and far low cost­er infra­struc­ture: pipes filled with com­pressed air. Paris’ pneu­mat­ic postal sys­tem had been in ser­vice since 1866, and in 1877, Vien­na had demon­strat­ed that the identical primary tech­nol­o­gy may very well be used to run clocks.

“The thought was to have a mas­ter clock within the cen­ter of Paris that may ship out a pulse every minute to syn­chro­nize each clock across the metropolis,” writes Ewan Cun­ning­ham at Pri­mal Neb­u­la, on a com­pan­ion web page to the Pri­mal House video above.

“The clocks wouldn’t must be pow­ered, the bursts of air would sim­ply transfer all of the clocks within the sys­tem for­ward on the similar time. As for the mas­ter clock itself, it was stored in time by “anoth­er tremendous accu­charge clock that was updat­ed dai­ly utilizing obser­va­tions of stars and plan­ets” on the Paris Obser­va­to­ry. Simply 5 years after its first imple­males­ta­tion in 1880, this sys­tem had made pos­si­ble the instal­la­tion of thou­sands of “Popp clocks” (named for its Aus­tri­an inven­tor Vic­tor Popp) in “lodges, prepare sta­tions, hous­es, faculties and pub­lic streets.”

In 1881, the vis­it­ing engi­neer Jules Albert Berly wrote of those “numer­ous clocks stand­ing on grace­ful gentle iron pil­lars within the squares, on the cor­ners of streets, and in oth­er con­spic­u­ous posi­tions in regards to the metropolis,” additionally not­ing these “by means of­out their lodges had been, what’s unusu­al with lodge clocks, preserve­ing accu­charge time.” Aside from the good flood of 1910, which “stopped time” throughout Paris, this pneu­mat­ic time-keep­ing sys­tem appears to have remained in regular ser­vice for close to­ly half a cen­tu­ry, till its dis­con­tin­u­a­tion in 1927. However even now, close to­ly a cen­tu­ry late, among the websites the place Popp clocks as soon as stood are nonetheless iden­ti­fi­in a position — and thus wor­thy websites of pil­grim­age for steam­punk followers each­the place.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Paris Had a Mov­ing Aspect­stroll in 1900, and a Thomas Edi­son Movie Cap­tured It in Motion

How Large Ben Works: A Detailed Look Inside London’s Beloved Vic­to­ri­an Clock Tow­er

The Clock That Modified the World: How John Harrison’s Moveable Clock Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Sea Nav­i­ga­tion within the 18th Cen­tu­ry

Clocks Across the World: How Oth­er Lan­guages Inform Time

How Clocks Modified Human­i­ty For­ev­er, Mak­ing Us Mas­ters and Slaves of Time

Watch Scenes from Belle Époque Paris Vivid­ly Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (Cir­ca 1890)

Based mostly in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His tasks embrace the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the ebook The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll by means of Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­ebook.