TIME CANDLES

New Zealand Tablet, 31 July 1913, Page 61

TIME CANDLES

Long, long ago, before clocks had been invented, King Alfred the Great devised a way of telling time with candles which was both quaint and interesting. He took six candles, each twelve inches long and containing twelve pennys’ . worth of wax these he divided into twelve parts, burning three of these in an hour, so that it would take four hours to consume all; and the six tapers lighted one after the other burned twenty-four hours. He quickly discovered, however, that the wind, blowing through the chinks of his house I (for houses were not built so carefully then as now), wasted the candles and made them burn irregularly ; so he designed a lantern made of ox horn, cut into thin plates, to enclose the tapers, thus insuring their burning with some degree of accuracy.