Time in Middle-earth

[Estelyn Telcontar]

I would assume that the clock on Bilbo's mantelpiece (The Hobbit, Chapter 2) is mechanical. As a matter of fact, I incorporated several ideas that you mention, Legate, into a fan fiction* about Hobbits who stayed in the Shire during the War of the Ring! I too assumed that clocks were a Dwarven invention and that any knowledge about their workings came to the Hobbits from them.


*Folco's fan fiction story - still incomplete, but not entirely without hope...

[Findegil]

If if we do not have hard evidence for the clock on Bilbos Mantelpiece, we have a picture by Tolkien of Bilbos hall ["Pictures by JRR Tolkien"; no 20: "The Hall at Bag-End, Residence of B. Baggins Esquire"]. In this picture we have two obviously mechanical clocks. On left beside the door showing six o'clock and one to the right with pendulum and two wieghts on a chain which shows to my great surprise seven o'clock.

Taking into account that Tolkien said that Hobbingen is on the latitude of Oxford then a difference of 1 hour in day time corrospondes to an distance of roughly 1500 km or 932 miles.
This is more or less the straight distance from Hobbing to the middle of Mirkwood. That means that he clock beside the door in Bilbos hall showed the Rhovanion time while that at his side wall showed Eridor time!

For the dwarvish reconing of time I assume that since the sundown on Dúrin's day was so improtant they would also recon time from sundown to sundown.

Therefore it might be a hobbitish invention to count day from midnight to midnight.

Respectfully
Findegil

[The Might]

Interesting find Findegil, nice idea, I guess that pretty much explains it.
Appendix D does indeed provide us with interesting information about calendars, but not about clocks, or on how they actually worked. I would assume they would be similar to older clocks from the past centuries, at least in the Shire, but it seems that their creation remains a mystery.
Anyway, I personally think that this took place some time after the creation of the Shire, after the Hobbits' lifestyle became more quite and peaceful.

[Galadriel55]

Looking up a quote for Palantir of Fortune, I came across the passage where Eomer and Theoden discuss with Ghan-buri-Ghan the time it would take to get their army through the hills. Here is the bit I find interesting:

‘Wild Men go quick on feet,’ said Ghân. ‘Way is wide for four horses in Stonewain Valley yonder,’ he waved his hand southwards; ‘but narrow at beginning and at end. Wild Man could walk from here to Dîn between sunrise and noon.’

‘Then we must allow at least seven hours for the leaders,’ said Éomer; ‘but we must reckon rather on some ten hours for all. Things unforeseen may hinder us, and if our host is all strung out, it will be long ere it can be set in order when we issue from the hills. What is the hour now?’

‘Who knows?’ said Théoden. ‘All is night now.’

‘It is all dark, but it is not all night,’ said Ghân. ‘When Sun comes we feel her, even when she is hidden. Already she climbs over East-mountains. It is the opening of day in the sky-fields.’

Thoughts in no particular order. I am not making a specific point, rather I was going to ask a question but found this existing thread, so I'm adding on.

1. The Wild men do not seem to have a precise system of counting time like other races we know of that count hours. Time appears to be measured by the position of the sun (and perhaps moon at night?) in the sky.

2. The Rohirrim use the hour system of counting time. Do they have mechanical clocks? Sundials? While I can see Bilbo, and even perhaps other hobbits, having mechanical clocks, the Rohirrim have a completely different cultural feel (I don't think they have umbrellas either for that matter). Regardless, Eomer easily translates sun-time into hour-time.

3. Regarding things said earlier in this thread about the Gondor bell counting hours from sunrise - I wondered if maybe they only kept count of time during the day, not at night, because their first hour of the day appears to be fixed to the rising of the sun rather than the end of a preceding hour (i.e. the sun could rise at the half-hour if it was the second way). Hours could then be kept by hourglasses, or candles/wicks of measured burning time. They could be kept through the night as well, but the next morning they'd run into the the problem of sunrise not necessarily corresponding to the hour strike. If I did not consider all this, I would probably say that Gondor used sundials, but then again - sunrise =/= hour1.

4. Shire, Rohan, Gondor, speculatively Dwarf settlements (anyone else?), all reckon time by hours, and since they can understand each other perfectly presumably these hours are all the same length. This points to "hour reckoning" being invented at a single place and spread, rather than evolving independently in each population. The different races kept the mechanism and the "size" of the subdivision of the day, but may have altered when the first hour and the start of the day happened based on existing notions of when the day starts. I realize Pippin translates 3 Gondor hours past sunrise as 9 o'clock exactly, but he may be approximating. It's not like he'd think "At this time of year and latitude the sun rises at 6:00..." - just that it rises around 6. If methods of time reckoning evolved independently in all these places, there would be no reason for them to have the same length of each hour/subdivision. So I conclude otherwise.

5. Now that we know the sun comes up around 6am at that time of year around that lattitude, it technically takes a Wild Man only 6 hours (sunrise to noon) to get through the path. I guess Eomer added one to make 7 to consider that the army will be going at a slower pace. Or maybe he miscounted.

6. They may actually all have kept time differently, but as the LOTR as we know it is a translation, all time measurements were converted into hours that we understand. Or, Tolkien paid more attention to language than he did to the mathematics of time keeping. Given that counting time with the 24 hour system is so widespread and taken for granted, perhaps he never even considered alternative measurements. It's either based on the sun's position or on hours, nothing in between. I'm not a fan of meta arguments, but sometimes they are the most logical explanation of why the author really wrote it that way. However, one can still speculate.

And now my clock tells me it's bedtime and I still have to study for an upcoming test, which I neglected because this is so cool. Perhaps if I write them an essay on the nature of time they will give me an extension.

[Galadriel55]

As I'm reading onward, despite my previous claim about studying, I came upon this:

Presently Ghân turned to the king. ‘Wild Men say many things,’ he said. ‘First, be wary! Still many men in camp beyond Dîn, an hour’s walk yonder,’ he waved his arm west towards the black beacon.

So even Wild Men at least understand, if not use, hours for counting time. They certainly don't have clocks.

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

So even Wild Men at least understand, if not use, hours for counting time. They certainly don't have clocks.

Which is kind of curious if they were really so isolated, where did they become so familiar with hours to know how far one could walk in an hour?

I think on that basis we must suppose that they used hours for telling time themselves.

[Galadriel55]

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

Which is kind of curious if they were really so isolated, where did they become so familiar with hours to know how far one could walk in an hour?

I think on that basis we must suppose that they used hours for telling time themselves.

I suppose the "hour" was an ancient concept, and the Druedain must have interacted at least a little bit with Men in the past, giving rise to common time-language. However, considering that no or few such interactions occurred in the past generations, it's a wonder they would still keep that knowledge if they had a more convenient way of counting time.