"This is it! This is the answer! It says here that a bolt of lightning is going to strike the clock tower at precisely 10:04 PM next Saturday Night! If we could somehow... harness this lightning; channel it into the Flux Capacitor, it just might work. Next Saturday night, we're sending you back to the future!"
- Dr. Emmett Brown in 1955, Back to the Future
Great Scott! It's great to see you again! I'm so glad you came back for SECONDS on my posts about the days of future past! I feel it's important to start blog posts about timekeeping with a quote from a time-travelling Doctor. What we are about to experience is not a comprehensive list of past ways of keeping time (for example, I won't go into the water clock), but it should nevertheless be instructive. Anyway, that's the hope.
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| Had Marty McFly come to Redmond, WA instead of Hill Valley, CA on October 21, 2015, he might have been surprised how similarly I was dressed. |
Come along with me as we hop in my DeLorean (that's the form my TARDIS is taking right now, thanks to the chameleon circuit and the flux capacitor that I installed) to remember how people used to tell time. We're going way farther back than Marty McFly went, all the way back to somewhere around 1500 BC. I'm sure you've figured out by now that I wasn't born yet at the time.
Sundial
There were sundials as far back as 1500 BC in Egypt. They have varied in appearance over the years, but in general they have had some sort of vertical pin or post in the middle, called a gnomon. As the earth rotates, the sun casts a shadow on a different part of the sundial, telling the time. This worked pretty well, but could present issues on rainy days and at night. The Greeks and Romans made improvements on them.
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| Sundial (this one is more recent than 1500 BC) Photo by Jagdish Bhatt on Unsplash |
Hourglass
Now we're moving forward to around 1300 AD, when people started using the hourglass. It couldn't tell the time, per se, but it was a great way of using the sands of time to mark how much time remained in a given task. Half of it was filled with sand, and you could turn it over and let the sand flow through to the other half. When the other half was full, the hour (or minute, or whatever time it represented) was up.
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| Photo by SUNBEAM PHOTOGRAPHY on Unsplash |
Belltowers
Save the clock tower! Save the clock tower! Mayor Wilson is sponsoring an initiative to replace that clock. 30 years ago, lightning struck that clock tower, and the clock hasn't run since. We at the Hill Valley Preservation Society think it should be preserved exactly the way it is, as part of our history and heritage.- Clocktower Lady in 1985, Back to the Future
In 1283, a tower in Dunstable, Bedfordshire, England gained a new feature. The kids of the day called it a turret clock, and it was driven by weight. Over the years, they were generally used by churches to tell the time, though they also were used elsewhere, such as the real Big Ben in London and the fictional bell tower at City Hall that was built in 1885 in Hill Valley, California. It was struck by lightning in 1955, and as of 2015, still wasn't fixed. (For all the other major changes that Hill Valley underwent between 1985 and 2015, you'd think they could have used some of that money to fix the clock tower?)
Cuckoo Clock
Now we're jumping forward in time to sometime in the 17th Century in Germany's Black Forest. That's where the earliest descriptions of the cuckoo clock happened. It's generally mounted on a wall, and often very fancy. A mechanical cuckoo bird jumps out at determined intervals and sings the song of its people. Thus the reason a cuckoo bird is so named—because of its distinct call. These clocks have a pendulum that sways back and forth.
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| Photo by Martin Kleppe on Unsplash |
Grandfather Clock
My grandfather's clock was too large for the shelf,
So it stood ninety years on the floor;
It was taller by half than the old man himself,
Though it weighed not a pennyweight more.
It was bought on the morn of the day that he was born,
And was always his treasure and pride;
But it stopped short — never to go again —
When the old man died.
Ninety years without slumbering (tick, tock, tick, tock),
His life seconds numbering, (tick, tock, tick, tock),
It stopped short — never to go again —
When the old man died.
So begins the sad tale of my grandfather's clock. He wasn't my grandfather, but it would appear he may have been Henry Clay Work's grandfather, whom he remembered in 1876. His grandfather loved watching the clock as he grew up. It struck 24 when he entered the house with his lovely bride. The clock was more faithful than any people; it just needed to be wound regularly. Eventually, it tolled the sad hour of his death and "stopped, short, never to go again, when the old man died."
As indicated in the song, grandfather clocks are tall and definitely don't fit on a shelf. Like a cuckoo clock, they have a pendulum, though it's much larger than the one on your average cuckoo clock. The pendulum of a grandfather clock is typically in a compartment with a glass front that you can open.
Stopwatch
Like an hourglass, a stopwatch measures time rather than telling it. You can time how long something takes to do. They are generally digital.
Cell Phone
As I'm sure you realized, I generally tell the time on my cell phone these days. I have an alarm clock on it. I can time things with a stopwatch on my phone if I so desire. I can check the time any time I want, provided I have my cell phone with me. We do have wall clocks, and there's a small alarm clock in my bathroom. I don't use the alarm for that one, but it is convenient as my phone isn't always as accessible in there. I can also tell the time on my computer.
For that matter, if you have Twitter, I recommend following @big_ben_clock, which tolls the hour every hour, which is super convenient, as long as you don't mind that it tolls London time.
BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG
— Big Ben (@big_ben_clock) April 3, 2023
Sources
- https://jackmasonbrand.com/blogs/news/how-did-people-tell-time-before-clocks (Disclaimer: While this article is interesting, I do not recommend visiting this website unless you want to be on their mailing list. I had to unsubscribe after receiving an unsolicited e-mail from them following my visit.)
- https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/renaissance-a2cc3971-344e-49db-801f-3a73619829e2
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckoo_clock
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_clock
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Grandfather%27s_Clock
