An Exciting Proposal
Tidying up I tripped over one more little gem from Watson's Ideas that I had marked, this one because of the lovely, all-purpose nature of the case made for the proposed clock in Lyons. I think we should use this as a model for modern proposals, for simplicity and clarity.
The first clocks in towns [around 1300] had no faces or hands but were just bells. ('Clock' is related to the French cloche and the German Glocke, which mean 'bell'.) Bell clocks were very popular from the start. A petition for a city clock at Lyons read: 'If such a clock were to be made, more merchants would come to the fairs, the citizens would be very consoled, cheerful and happy and would live a more orderly life, and the town would gain in decoration.'
[Peter Watson, 'Ideas : A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud (New York : HarperCollinsPublishers, 2005), page 379.]