Momento Espírita
Curitiba, 22 de Outubro de 2024
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ícone Invention and inventor

Have we ever thought about how we lived before the invention of the clock?

Let us imagine setting a meeting:

When the shadow of that tree reaches the rock, we will meet, right?

Or: When the sun reaches your window, I will be waiting for you at the city´s square.

The idea of measuring time is very old. We created the hourglass, the sand clock, around 600 BC.

In 725 AC., the Chinese Buddhist monk Yi Ching made the first mechanical clock that we know.

It worked using a set of gears and sixty buckets of water, corresponding to the sixty seconds that make up a minute.

It was in 1500, the time of great navigation and discoveries, in Nuremberg, that Peter Henlein made the first pocket watch in history.

Because of its oval shape and its origin, it became known as the Nuremberg Egg.

It was made entirely of iron, from the outside to the complex internal mechanism.

Its winding lasted forty hours, made with pig hair, a kind of prototype for the spiral springs that would become common years later.

The wristwatch also has many stories. Some people attribute its invention to watchmaker Abraham Louis Breguet.

It was an order from Napoleon Bonaparte's sister, the Princess of Naples, Carolina Murat. However, sources are scarce and there is no way to prove the veracity of this information.

The most widely accepted hypothesis is that the inventor of the wristwatch was the same as the inventor of the airplane: the Brazilian Alberto Santos Dumont.

It is said that the Father of Aviation needed a practical solution to be able to time his flights.

Like everyone else, he had a pocket watch attached to a chain, but he had the idea of ordering a watch that could be attached to the wrist, making it easier to keep track of the time.

The order was made to his friend and famous watchmaker Louis Cartier. In 1904, Cartier gave him what is considered by many to be the world's first wristwatch.

The object was named after its owner: The Santos watch.

*   *   *

Whenever an invention is created, we want to know who the inventor is. So we do some research and register it in order to attribute it, in a proper manner, to the correct author.

The French philosopher and writer, Voltaire, once said: The world intrigues me. I cannot imagine that this watch exists and there is no watchmaker. 

Contemplating the Universe, the greatness of nature that shows us an unparallelled diversity, unique beauty, creativity, we continue with Voltaire:

If the palace announces the architect, how would the Universe not demonstrate the Supreme Intelligence?

What plant, what animal, what element, star, does not bear the mark of the one whom Plato used to call Eternal Geometer?

Nature's lessons are obvious. If the clock tells us about the need for a watchmaker to invent it, what can we say about the splendors we contemplate every day?

Eyes to see, as Jesus called for. To see the Supreme Intelligence, God, in simple things, in the wisdom and zeal with which He arranged everything for His creature: the immortal being.

Let us open our eyes.

Spiritist Moment Team.
September 16.2024

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