- 2024-05-06游客56742389
The mechanical clock came from China.
这句话真让人吃惊：机械钟表源于中国？怎么不知道呢？印象之中，电影电视里，西方的传教士把钟表作为礼物向中国的皇帝进贡，和珅还贪污了不少呢，没错吧？而且，故宫奉先殿里陈列着皇宫收藏的各式各样精美的钟表，琳琅满目，华丽多彩，其中不少来自英国、法国、瑞士、日本等国。想象中一道靓丽的风景便是，在皇宫的每个角落几乎都摆放着钟表，滴答、滴答的钟鸣声响彻整个紫禁城。
带着Where did the mechanical clock came from?这个问题，问了身边的几位朋友，他们的回答都印证了我们固有的思维定势：机械钟表起源于欧洲。
The mechanical clock came from China这句话源于犬子的一本英语读物，是剑桥出版的啊！老外不会奉承中国人的，他们在骨子里就没有那么善良。于是，在大不列颠百科全书网站查到这样一个事实：The Chinese designed the very first mechanical clock in 700 A.D. 然后，还找到了以下的一些facts:
The first European public clock that struck the hours was erected in Milan in 1335.
The oldest surviving clocks are in England (1386) and France (1389).
The first domestic clocks appeared late in the 14th century.
About 1500 Peter Henlein, a German locksmith, began to make the first portable timepieces, small clocks driven by a spring.
Christiaan Huygens invented pendulum clocks in 1656.
Big Ben, the great clock at Westminster in London, was installed in 1859 and is the standard for all accurate tower pendulum clocks.
The most accurate mechanical timekeepers (within a few thousandths of a second per day) are clocks with short pendulums (about 39 in. [or 990 mm]).
In 1929 the vibration of a quartz crystal was first applied to timekeeping; the maximum error of an observatory quartz-crystal clock is only a few ten-thousandths of a second per day.
The first atomic clock went into operation in 1951. Atomic clocks, regulated by the natural periodic behaviour of a system of atoms (such as vibrations or emission of radiation), can have accuracies exceeding one billionth of a second per day, making them the most accurate clocks yet invented.
在敲打以上这些文字的时候，真为自己的无知而羞愧，也为中学的历史老师没有告诉我们这一点而遗憾；同时，也为这个伟大的发明源于中国而自豪！我们的祖先真了不起，给我们留下的东西真不少。
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