Measuring Time

The Time Measurement gallery displays more than 500 timepieces, from water clocks used by the Ancient Egyptians to pocket sundials and atomic clocks.

You can also get close up to see the workings of a cathedral clock that would normally be high up and out of reach! This is the Wells Cathedral clock, which dates back to 1392 and is the third oldest surviving clock in the world.

The Hipp Chronoscope, invented by Mathias Hipp from Switzerland in 1888, could measure time to the accuracy of one thousandth of a second. This machine was popular with scientists conducting psychology experiments towards the end of the 19th century who believed they could measure the speed of thought.