"Oh So Very Many Questions Than Before Not Worth Their Own Thread" Thread Vol. XXVI

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Previous thread.

Why do different countries have different voltages and sockets? Why haven't things been standardized?

 

[Cutlass]

They were. Within the countries. By the time cross country incompatibility became an issue, each country had so much sunk capital in the old methods that it would cost too much to change.

 

[Kennigit]

How do I see very old posts of mine (basically just want to see my oldest posts and go forward in time from there)

 

[Kyriakos]

I do love this term. It does not really exist in Greek in any similar manner, due to the Byzantine timeline.

Mostly interested in why it was formed in this way. "Tower of the clock" or something similar would have been a lot more descriptive, although the later more common existence of such towers could render it a pleonasm.

In what language did the original phrasing appear? Also: how did it develop to the English one?

 

[Flying Pig]

Clock-tower like watch-tower, post-office, whore-house and so on. I don't imagine that 'clock-tower' and 'clock' are that far removed - 'clock', certainly, comes from French via Dutch, and 'tower' from Latin via French.

 

[Kyriakos]

Yes, but wasn't the original term non-english?

And a watch-tower is the tower of a watch (a small group of watchers). Not entirely the same as the tower of the clock, being of an object This is part of why i love this phrase, it is of an object that exists somewhere, and yet the term does not make it secondary to that location).

I just read that "clock" originates from the celtic word. Before the Greek composite term "orologion" (from ora=time and legein=to speak of) was used

 

[Flying Pig]

I can't imagine that it's a term that really needs importing - it's probably an organic thing rather than copying somebody else. After all, if you see a tower with a clock on it for the first time, it's pretty instinctive that you're going to call it something like a 'clock-tower'. Perhaps it could be a Dutch thing, since compound words like that are quite common in Germanic languages, and 'clock' itself is a Dutch word (Klok, I think). As I said, I doubt there was much time between there being a word for 'clock' and there being clock-towers, since most clocks in the early period would have been put upon them.

EDIT: It seems that early clock towers didn't acutally have clock faces at all, but just sounded bells. 'Klok' comes from the French cloche, meaning bell, making a clock tower a cloche-tour - a tower a bell.

 

[Kyriakos]

I can't imagine that it's a term that really needs importing - it's probably an organic thing rather than copying somebody else. After all, if you see a tower with a clock on it for the first time, it's pretty instinctive that you're going to call it something like a 'clock-tower'.

(not in all languages. Here, for example, this does not make sense, unless under a form of 'poetic licence')

 

[Perfection]

Watch towers are just little clock towers

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Mine grew a searchlight though, not a clock.

 

[Perfection]

It must not be heavy enough to be a tower, merely a light house

 

[warpus]

English is a Germanic language and thus full of compound words: automobile, clock tower, the others that have been mentioned, kitchen knife, butter knife, driveway, parkway, or whatever else.

Looking up the etymology for the compound words:

Clock - late 14c., clokke, originally "clock with bells," probably from Middle Dutch clocke (Dutch klok) "a clock," from Old North French cloque (Old French cloke, Modern French cloche), from Medieval Latin (7c.) clocca "bell," probably from Celtic (cf. Old Irish clocc, Welsh cloch, Manx clagg "a bell") and spread by Irish missionaries (unless the Celtic words are from Latin); ultimately of imitative origin.

Tower - Old English torr "tower, watchtower," from Latin turris "a tower, citadel, high structure" (also source of Old French tor, 11c.; Spanish, Italian torre "tower"), possibly from a pre-Indo-European Mediterranean language. Meaning "lofty pile or mass" is recorded from mid-14c. Also borrowed separately 13c. as tour, from Old French tur; the modern spelling (1520s) represents a merger of the two forms.

That should answer the question. Right?

 

[Phrossack]

It's a tower. With a clock in it.

There's a thread for these sorts of questions.

 

[Kyriakos]

I will agree that the reply was (sort of) given already, so thanks to all

 

[Borachio]

There's the term campanile, too. Italian for bell tower.

Haven't all cultures had some means for telling the hours, so that sentries, bakeries, whorehouses, etc, knew when to change guard, put the bread in the oven, and change clients?

 

[Perfection]

Hey anyone know wtf is inside water towers?

 

[Leoreth]

There's the term campanile, too. Italian for bell tower.

Haven't all cultures had some means for telling the hours, so that sentries, bakeries, whorehouses, etc, knew when to change guard, put the bread in the oven, and change clients?

That really depends on the required level of accuracy. If you really need something done in specific intervals, you would use a sandglass or a water clock before the invention of mechanical clocks that were precise enough to measure minutes. But I doubt any of your examples would've worked that way, they're more likely to just use the position of the sun.

Hey anyone know wtf is inside water towers?

You might know them by their more colloquial name "towers of the water".

 

[Kyriakos]

^Yeah.

Where has the time gone..

 

[Perfection]

Wasted in this time sink.

 

[Borachio]

That really depends on the required level of accuracy. If you really need something done in specific intervals, you would use a sandglass or a water clock before the invention of mechanical clocks that were precise enough to measure minutes. But I doubt any of your examples would've worked that way, they're more likely to just use the position of the sun.

I'm not sure I agree. Yes, for accuracy you'd use a sandglass or something, and then you might publish your result by ringing a bell in the campanile so that the whole town would know. For baking bread you really have to be up in the middle of the night. And sentries used to be changed at regular hours throughout the night, didn't they? And whorehouses have traditionally functioned at night too, when the position of the sun isn't very helpful.

Then, after a bit, the whole process became automated and the clock tower was adopted. Result: one redundant bell-ringer.