- Then they garbled on about the philosophical nature of time, still resisting payment.
- It was during that wistful, skyward narrative that I saw the timepiece slip from their hand and hit the marble floor.
- Time was important enough to our ancestors that they went to the effort of building an extraordinary prehistoric monument, Stonehenge.
It’s in the timing
- The Sumerians (4100-1750BC) based around Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) calculated that the day was approximately 24 hours and that each hour was 60 minutes long.
- Water clocks used the gradual flow of water from one container to another to measure time.
- But the length of these “hours” varied depending on the time of year – longer in summertime than winter.
- These measures of time were based on the Sun, with 12 parts during daylight, and another 12 parts through the night.
- The time period between these canonical prayers became equal in length because of the rigidity of prayer times.
Prayer time
While we can’t be certain from historical records if it was monks who made the first mechanical clocks, we do know that they first appeared in the 14th century. Their first mention is in the Italian physician, astronomer and mechanical engineer Giovanni de Dondi’s treatise Tractatus Astrarii, or Planetarium. De Dondi states that early clocks used gravity as their power source and were driven by weights.
- These early clocks started popping up in city centres but, since they did not have a face, they used bells to signal the hours.
- These signals began to organise the market times and administrative needs of each city.
- Coiled springs as a method of releasing energy for clocks began to appear in Europe in the 15th century.
Time tracking in other parts of the world
- And long before that, the Ancient Greek Antikythera mechanism, regarded as the world’s first computer, is dated at around 100BC (having been discovered in AD1901).
- Meanwhile in China, there was Su Song’s astronomical clock – dated to AD1088 – which was powered by water.
- Today, wherever we are in the world, time is a unified construct – and the search for ever-more precise measurements continues.
Jaq Prendergast does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
