But none of the first mechanical clocks had either hands or faces. Instead, they told time by the ringing of bells. (In fact, the English word “clock” comes from the German word Glocke, meaning “bell.”) And the clock face that is familiar to us—with an hour hand and a minute hand rotating inside a circular dial bearing twelve numbers—did not come into general use until 1700, more than four hundred years after the first mechanical clocks were installed in the towers of Europe’s churches and monasteries.
