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Questions concerning Rate of "fire" per minute

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bow-toxo:

--- Quote from: CraigMBeckett on January 14, 2012, 09:54:37 am ---Erik,

 the first appearance of a clock face displaying minutes is (as you point out) in an illustration dated 1475 , some 59 years after Agincourt the campain from which the slow archers were supposedly either returned to England or not taken to. Now even if there were clocks around that displayed minutes (something that even in the 16th Centuary was rare with the majority aparently only displaying 15 minute intervals), there were none that accurately displayed seconds, and it is the exposure to accurate second displays that enables people to "accurately" count minutes.

Craig.

--- End quote ---

Not "the first appearance of a clock face displaying minutes" but  the oldest available illustration of one.  You really don't need seconds to know that a quarter hour contains
15 minutes, and a further division , possibly off by ba second or two, is [like a fistmele] enough for non industrial measurement.

CraigMBeckett:

--- Quote from: bow-toxo on January 14, 2012, 06:42:19 pm ---Not "the first appearance of a clock face displaying minutes" but  the oldest available illustration of one.  You really don't need seconds to know that a quarter hour contains
15 minutes, and a further division , possibly off by ba second or two, is [like a fistmele] enough for non industrial measurement.

--- End quote ---

It apparently is the earliest indication of such a clock face, or do you know of an earlier one? Clocks are not my thing but I do know that to be a clock the mechanism must chime the hours or more, if there are no chimes then the mechanism is a time piece so it is probably wrong to call the early dials "clock faces".

Craig.

Steve H:
Just a quick note on armor and hardness

Tests on armour from the castle Sherbourg 34 samples taken from 21 armours
1 iron
8 low carbon steels of which 4 had been hardened
25 medium carbon steels of which 16 were hardened

Of 108 specimens tested produced during the 80 year period between 1435 to 1515
9 were of iron
61 were low carbon steels of which 9 had been hardened
38 were of medium carbon steels of which 25 had been hardened

From the Rhodes specimens 22 samples
2 were made from iron
11 were of low carbon steels of which 3 had been hardened
9 were of medium carbon steels of which 5 had been hardened

Many of the armours tested contained inclusions ferrite /perlite and slag

NB modern medium carbon steel contains 0.5% to 0.8% carbon this is what the samples were compared against for the above.

References

Willims AR 1986 Fifteenth Century Armour from Churburg a metallurgical study Armi Antiche 3-82
Walter J Karcheski, Thom Richardson, The Medieval Armour from Rhodes ISBN 0 948092 41 6 Royal Armouries Museum in conjunction with the Higgins Armoury Museum Appendix 3 Alan Williams 150-151

I hope this helps put into context how durable the armour of the time was.  Please bare in mind that these existing examples were possibly of good quality hence they haven't been broken down and reused hence why they survive today and are possibly of superior quality when compared to the mass produced munitions armour of which very little survives today.

In addition I have information on Rockwell hardness scores for most of the armour indicated above and for later 16C armour if I get chance I will post this also.

Regards

Steve

CraigMBeckett:
Steve H,

Thank for the info, look forward to your info on hardness.

Do you have dates for the armour from castle Sherbourg and Rhodes?

Craig.

bumppo:
Reference for 1415 exchequer records for the Duke of York, reporting an incident in which 4 archers are removed from the rolls for failing to shoot the necessary ten arrows a minute.

The manuscript is in the National Archives, in the exchequer records (E) and the call number for the manuscript is E101/45/19. You can get copies through the National Archives website either sent to you via e-mail or as photocopies. A word of warning - you need to be able to read exchequer script and latin to be able to decipher it!

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/recordcopying/default.aspx

As far as what a minute was, its very doubtful it matches our understanding of 60 seconds. Musicians did keep time, oarsman on ships kept time, astronomers measured time very accurately with various mechanical clocks. One of the most important functions of timekeeping in the middle ages was for religious purposes, signaling times for prayer etc. and a variety of devices were used to keep track of the hour.... candles, sundials, clocks..... and its very probable Harfleur had a clock tower in 1415, but most certainly would not have had a minute hand.

My way of thinking leads me to the simplest solution, somebody just counted a simple cadence, or maybe sang or played a short song at a certain tempo, probably an older archer skilled in this test. He was probably taught how to do it the way a musician would have been taught to play a song, or monks to chant....... by ear. This to me means there had to be some variation to the length of this test, and was not exactly 60 seconds. However it probably served to be good enough or accurate enough to designate which archers were deemed worthy to keep in the army.

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