Introduction

Many English pocket watches of the early and mid-eighteenth century bear on the balance cock a masque of a hideous face.  Some easily available examples are: the balance cock of the watch built by Thomas Mudge for the King of Spain, hallmarked 1753, and the designs considered for the plate of John Harrison’s famous chronometer, H-4.  The faces share certain characteristics: they are all male, ugly and hostile, with wild hair, moustaches and sometimes beards, and their teeth are on threatening display. The face is described merely as a “masque” in the literature of clocks and watches, such as Baillie or Britten; nowhere does the watchmaking historical literature suggest whose face is represented by that ugly masque. A typical mid-eighteenth century balance cock is shown in Figure 1. Notice in this figure that the teeth are at the lower edge of the elevated table of the cock; this is an especially frequent depiction. Four other masques from eighteenth century balance cocks are gathered in Figure 2. Examine the faces closely and observe the big, ugly teeth. But also notice that these teeth are square, like human incisors, not pointed like the fangs of a carnivore such as a lion, tiger, wolf, or even dog; the face is human, or superhuman, not animal. This article asserts that these masques represent the face of Chronos, the pre-Olympic Greek Titan who is eponymous with Time, and gathers supporting literary and iconographical evidence.

Discussion

This is the ancient story of the last of the Greek Titans.

In The Beginning the Sky covered the Earth; from that fruitful union grew the race of  Titans of whom the last and youngest was Chronos—Time. Chronos is renowned, as he . . .

1. overthrew his father,
2. seizing his father’s genitals in his left hand (Latin, manu sinistra, thus explaining the evil connotations of the modern English word sinister), castrated him with a sickle, and,
3. devoured his own children as they were born, until by deceit his wife saved one  child whom we know as Zeus, who eventually, in turn, overthrew Chronos and founded the family of the Olympic Gods—Neptune, Pluto (Hades), Hera, Athena, Apollo, Diana, etc.

Now read this story as the allegory it is:

1. In Time, young people always succeed the older generation in every position of power;
2. Time takes away male sexual potency, and
3. Everything that lives eventually dies, is devoured by Time.

We note that the ancient sickle has grown over the millennia to become a scythe, and that Chronos, having acquired the occasional added symbol of an hourglass, is now known as Father Time, the Grim Reaper. The name Chronos now appears in many aspects of modern language relating to Time. We note that Chronos is spelled in Greek as wherein the first letter is , spelled “Chi” in English, and pronounced to rhyme with sky. There are several transliterations of the letter to the English alphabet, including “Ch,” “k,” “kh,” “C,” etc.; “ch” is the most common at present.

Now turn your attention to the economic and social environment in England during the eighteenth century. Who was then able to buy a pocket watch? Certainly not the ordinary workman. Those who could afford such an item of personal adornment with its silver or gold pair-cases were necessarily affluent. The education of the children of affluent English families at that time routinely included the classics, frequently Greek and Latin languages, certainly ancient history, legend, and mythology. The notion of Chronos would not have been strange to them. Similarly, modern English has many words that originate from Chronos, such as synchronous (at the same time), chronology (the order of time of events), chronic (continuing through time), and also in Scriptural language, for example, The Book of Chronicles.

Over the years, I have seen dozens of these masques; all are different. This indicates that they were not the product of a single parts-maker, but that the concept of Chronos was widely distributed in the watchmaking industry, as in the culture. Their period appears to run from the end of the seventeenth century, vide a Tompion I have seen with the masque, to the first quarter of the nineteenth century, judging from the examples that can be dated.

It is now “time” that these masques be assigned their correct name: “The Masque of Chronos.”

References

1          David Penney, “Thomas Mudge and the Longitude: A Reason to Excel,” in The Quest for Longitude: The Proceedings of the Longitude Symposium, Harvard University (Cambridge, MA: Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, Harvard University, 1996): pp. 294-309. See p. 301, lower left corner of Figure 6.

2          Dava Sobel and William J. H. Andrewes, The Illustrated Longitude (New York: Walker and Company, 1998). See the Figure on page 130, wherein Chronos appears upside-down at the 6 o’clock position.

3          “... Chronos, (Time) sometimes confused with Kronos, and AEon ... .,” Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. IX, edited by James Hastings (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons): p. 793.

4          “ ... The later Greeks read Cronus as Chronos, Father Time, with his relentless sickle.” Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, Vol. 1 (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1955): p. 38, note 2.

5            “CHRONOMETER. A timekeeping device of great accuracy, particularly used for determining longitude at sea. ...” The first instance of its employment in connection with marine timekeeping is to be found in Jeremy Thacker’s “The Longitude Examined,” (London, 1714), Encyclopedia Brittanica, Vol. 5, 1961: p. 647.

6            “CHRONICLE. The historical works written in the middle ages are variously designated ‘histories’, ‘annals,’ or ‘chronicles’ (from Gr. chronos, ‘time’) ... C. Bem,” Encyclopedia Brittanica, Vol. 5, 1961: p. 647.

7            “Greek-English Lexicon,” Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, (Wexford: Clarendon Press, 1968), “cronos ...”  [Chronos].

8          “Crony; Eng. fr. Gk, Chronios, from chronos, time.” Webster’s Third International Dictionary.

9            Bulfinch’s Mythology, (London, Spring Books, 1963). “The representations of Saturn [Chronos] are not very consistent; for on the one hand his reign is said to have been the golden age ..., and on the other he is described as a monster who devoured his own children.

This inconsistency arises from considering the Saturn of the Romans the same as the Grecian deity Cronos (Time) which as it brings an end to all things which have a beginning, may be said to devour its own offspring.”

10        “It [the account of creation of the universe and the Gods] begins with Chronos (‘Time,’ an Orphic reinterpretation of the name Kronios)...” Roy Willis, World Mythology, Gen. Ed. (New York: Henry Hold and Co., 1996): p. 128.

11            “Schnitter Tod, death armed with a scythe, became an obsessive image following the epidemics that plagued the West in the fourteenth century.” Fernand Braudel, The Structures of Everyday Life, Vol. 1 (New York: Harper and Row, 1985): p. 335. This is another, more brutal, view of Father Time (sometimes Grandfather Time), equipped with an hourglass and scythe.

12                “Chron, or chrono, prefix, [fr. chronos], time.” Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th ed., p. 204.

About the Author

Fred Powell was educated as a mathematician and worked as a systems engineer in various areas of aeronautics. His particular interest in horology is in fusee pocket watches. He holds four U.S. patents and has published 37 articles on various topics in applied mathematics, plus six on restoration and scientific aspects of fusee watches in the NAWCC Bulletin, and two monographs on the dynamics of the verge escapement in watches. In addition he presented a paper on restoration methods at the 1996 NAWCC National Convention in Cleveland, OH, and conducted several workshops on fusee watch restoration. He has been an NAWCC member for over 30 years and now is a member of Green Mountain Timekeepers Society Chapter 109 and Horological Science Chapter 161.