All About Clocks

Punch the clock

About 6,000 years ago the Sumerians and then the Egyptians invented clocks - water clocks.  Messy things.  Thank goodness, times have changed - sorry, cheap joke.

Einstein sez:

After too many carpets got soaked, people turned to other clock ideas.  Lamps or candles with markings along the sides divided into equal portions were used to measure the progress of time.  Einstein could explain this better than we can, but time measurement is just an arbitrary, consistent division of the passage of… well, time.  Making time - so to speak.  In order to be useful, a clock must provide a way to display the process.  Marking time - so to speak.  Lamps, candles, water, sand, as well as sundials worked well enough.  Until the invention of the modern workday and a concept called, "the Boss."  Well, time is money - so to speak.  Welcome to the modern world of clocks.

Clock like an Egyptian

An obelisk is a lofty, thin tower used by the Egyptians in 3500 B.C. to track time, and incidentally inspire the designers of the Washington Monument years later. The obelisk formed a shadow cast by the sun's movements across the sky. Dividing the day in half, at noontime the shadow was its longest - and it reached its ultimate length at noontime on the longest day of the year. Likewise, the obelisk's shadow was its least length on the shortest day of the year.   Good enough when your job started at half-past summer.

Casual Fridays?
 
The first instrument to divide daylight into 12 hours came about around 1500 B.C.  After Ramses III asked, "Is it Wednesday yet?" and no one knew the answer.  Obviously a sundial was used during the day, while a merkhet, an astronomical tool used to track star patterns, helped the Egyptians keep time at night. Neither clock fit above the kitchen stove or on your wrist.

Time sloshes on

The Greeks invented clepsydras, which isn't surprising since "clepsydras" is a Greek word.  Around 325 B.C., stone clepsydras had markings along their curved sides and a hole water dripped through. The deeper the water, the later you were for your dental appointment.  Not terribly accurate as clocks go, at least they worked day and night - soon Greek wives found out how late their hubby's were getting home from the gym - also a Greek word, "gym" that is.  Eventually the Greeks made clepsydras that rang like alarm clocks, though Socrates always slept until noon anyway.

If I could hold back time

Eventually a Dutch guy, Christian Huygens, invented the pendulum clock in 1656. This was an improvement on the weight-operated clocks that had become the norm in Italy during the 1300's, and gave Edgar Allan Poe a good story device 200 years later. Huygens got his clock to work within a 10-second-error per day precision. That made the Boss happy since he was now able to figure out exactly how late Huygens was on the day after New Year's.

Time keeps on ticking into the future

Today, clocks are everywhere - city hall towers, church spires, bank drive-thrus, and some clocks on automobile dashboards actually work for a whole month after the car is purchased. Wristwatches, keep us on schedule and give us something to look at when we're nervous.  Mantel clocks are charming and functional. Digital clocks are precise to within a fraction of a second - teenagers discover this all the time on Saturday nights.   The Olympics wouldn't be the same without digital stopwatches - and annoying announcers. Grandfather clocks show up on "Antiques Road Show."  And the clock on the microwave tells you when your popcorn is fully irradiated.

The joy of time

Thanks to technological advancement throughout the ages, we can now experience all the joy of being too late, too early or a day late and a dollar short.  Clocks: when would we be without them?

More information on clocks