• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 1996.11a
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• pp.697-701
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• 1996

King Sejong's Striking water-clock which brought in use on the first of July in 1434 was mainly composed of timekeeping and time announcing parts signalling twelve double-hours, and five night-watches and night-watch-divisions automatically by means of ball-operating jackworks. The clock was arranged with dual timekeeping system, the one for a full day(twelve double-hours) and the other for five night-watches achieving twelve double-hours and one-hundred interval horary systems. The vessels were arrayed in inflow-type water-clock, a large reservoir on the highest story, a constant-level tank for supplying water to the measuring vessel evenly in the middle, and the lowest tank to receive water from the above constant-level tank. An indicator-rod on the float was raised upwards depending on the water-level increase to show timing scales and also to release small bronze balls from the ball-rack mechanisms implanted on the measuring vessel to signal timing intervals.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 1996.11a
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• pp.702-706
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• 1996

The King Sejong's Striking water-clock was named for its distictive day and night time announcing system. Its time announcing system generates acoustic and visual signals for the twelve double hour, and combinations of two different acoustic signals for the five night watches, The mechanism of this signal generation system is triggered by a copper ball which is mechanically digitized time keeping signal, and is generated from the water clock. The time announcing system consisted four parts: 1) the mechanical amplifier which changes small copper to heavy steel ball, 2) day time announcing system, 3) night time announcing system, 4) sounding mechanism. The time announcing system of King Seong's Striking Clepsidra is remotely related to the Arabic clock system, however, it does have world-widely distictive mechanisms of its era, such as mechanical amplifier, self-weight rachet mechanism, and resetable mechanical computer etc.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.505-528
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• 2004

We have reproduced the records of lunar occultation recorded in the History of Three Kingdoms(삼국사기), the History of the Koryo Dynasty (고려사), the Annals of the Choson Dynasty (朝鮮王朝實錄), the Daily Records of Royal Secretariat of the Choson Dynasty (승정원일기), and obtained the epochs of their realizations. We analysed these results to understand how the system of hours had been kept and when a day began. During most of the periods encompassed by these annals, the 12 double hours(12진각법) and the system of 100 divisions of the day (백각법) had been used when the lunar and the solar eclipses were calculated by royal astronomers. In these systems, the starting point of a day is midnight. On the other hand, the five watch system of hours (경점법), in which a night is divided into five watches, was also used. In this system, a day begins at the sunrise. We found that the traditional twilight, called dusk and dawn (혼명) and used in the east Asian countries, largely corresponds to the nautical twilight in modern concepts. This fact means that the Korean expressions and words for time system in every day life had originated form the five watch system of hours. We pointed out that the sunrise and sunset were convenient boundary lines to ancient astronomers, as well as to farmers in the agricultural society. Our results can be used to determine the exact epoch of each astronomical record in chronicles.