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SCIENCE 601<br />

London, Canterbury, Paris, and other places at the end ofthe<br />

thirteenth century, and in Milan, St. Albans, Glastonbury,<br />

Avignon, and elsewhere in the early fourteenth century. But<br />

the earliest true clocks of which the mechanism is definitely<br />

known are the Dover castle clock, which is now in the Science<br />

Museum in London and used to be dated 1348 but is almost<br />

certainly later, and Henri de Vick's clock set up on the Palais<br />

Royal in Paris in 1 370.<br />

Clocks may be said to have introduced the ordinary man to<br />

the notion of mathematical time, divided into equal and in"<br />

different intervals; mathematical space, extended into three<br />

dimensions in equal units of length, was made the measure of<br />

his world by the cartographer. As the natural and liturgical<br />

seasons gave way in the organization of time to a mechanical<br />

measure, so, alongside the hieratic maps,<br />

like the Hereford<br />

Mappa mundi of 1 3 14, depicting the world divided into regions<br />

according to their spiritual relation with the holy city ofJeru' salem, there were made maps by which travellers and mariners<br />

could find their way over the surface ofthe visible globe. Ofthe<br />

most accurate ofthese medieval maps, the portolani<br />

or compass^<br />

charts, made and used by mariners in conjunction with a conv<br />

pass, there are no known English examples; but two maps of<br />

England are pioneer ventures in mapping on land and show<br />

that progress was made. The first was drawn by Matthew Paris<br />

about 1250 (PL 130), and the second, the so-called *Gough<br />

map*, was drawn by an unknown cartographer somewhat less<br />

than a century later (PL 21 in Chap. VI). Both show roads<br />

and towns, but the second is much more accurate, and also<br />

indicates mileages, probably as estimated by travellers. Roger<br />

Bacon belongs also to the history of English cartography, not<br />

only for his recognition of the need for accurate astronomical<br />

measures of latitude and longitude, but also for a pregnant<br />

mistake. His belief that there was no great width of ocean<br />

between Europe and China became known to Columbus<br />

through the writings of Pierre D'Ailly and Aeneas Sylvius;<br />

it is said to have encouraged him to make the voyage by which<br />

he discovered the New World.

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