Water Clock at Souk Sharq – a memorable one for every expat
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Many new Malls and Entertainment Places have come to Kuwait over the years, but still a favorite place for a new comer to this country is the one and only water clock in the Gulf, which is located at Souk Sharq. It’s always a sight to see new comers to Kuwait come here to look at the water clock and stand near to take photographs.
In this era where Mechanical Clocks, Electronic items like Mobiles and Wrist Watches are used to see the time, there are only 21 water clocks worldwide and only one in the Gulf and that is here! The Water clock is located at Souk Sharq Mall, a major shopping center in Kuwait City, Kuwait. This 5.5m structure water clock is constructed by Professor Bernard Gitton and is located in the Central hall of the Mall.
Water clocks are some of the world's oldest time-measuring devices and are measured by the regular dripping of water through a narrow opening. As water accumulated in the lower reservoir, a float carrying a pointer rose and marked the hours. There are two types of water clocks: inflow and outflow. In an outflow water clock, a container is filled with water, and the water is drained slowly and evenly out of the container. This container has markings that are used to show the passage of time. As the water leaves the container, an observer can see where the water is level with the lines and tell how much time has passed. An inflow water clock works in basically the same way, except instead of flowing out of the container, the water is filling up the marked container. As the container fills, the observer can see where the water meets the lines and tell how much time has passed.
The Water clock at Souk Sharq is an inflow water clock and time is read by measuring the water filling in the marked container. The blue dye used in the water makes it attractive and easy to read the time.
Here's how it works: A basement pump sends the solution up through the clock's central pipe into a reservoir atop the timepiece, from where it drips onto a scoop. With a swing of the clock's pendulum, the scoop pours water into a series of siphons, or inverted U-shaped tubes. As more water falls, the H20 already in the tubes rises, ultimately emptying into a series of small glass globes, each one representing 2 minutes. Once all 30 small glass globes reach capacity, they empty and a larger hour globe fills.
One side of the clock tells you the hour and the other side tells you the minutes. To calculate the time, figure out the hour by counting the number of filled larger globes, and for minutes, count the filled smaller globes and multiple by two.
We may be spending our weekends at various malls which are much bigger than the Souk Sharq, but there is no doubt that the water clock is a must see place in Kuwait. It’s amazing to watch the flow of water and reading the time but more amazing when doing some research on its working.
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Deepika Nambiar is part of the IIK team and IWIK core team. She does regular contributions to the news portal IndiansinKuwait.com and also for Timesofindia.com.
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