A Brief History Of Timekeeping Devices

By Zhanna Hofstatter MAR4233

Dr. Nancy Richmond

I am delighted to share my passion for timekeeping devices and watchmaking through this presentation. Please visit my personal website and LinkedIn page for more information:

• http://zhofstatter.flavors.me/  • https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=AAIAABT_f9UBH1fPZmka

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13.7 billion years ago it all began with an explosion… Everything including time

was born in a split of a second.

I. SEXAGESIMAL SYSTEM BASED ON 60

Time as we know it today is measured by the system developed by the ancient Sumerians in the 3rd millennium BC, it was passed down to the

ancient Babylonians, and it is still used—in a modified form—for measuring time, angles, and geographic coordinates.

WHERE DOES 60 COME FROM???

It is possible for people to count on their fingers to 12 using one hand only, with the thumb pointing to each finger bone on the four fingers in turn. has twelve factors, namely {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30,

60}, of which 2, 3, and 5 are prime numbers. With so many factors, many fractions involving sexagesimal numbers are simplified. For

example, one hour can be divided evenly into sections of 30 minutes, 20 minutes, 15 minutes, 12 minutes, 10 minutes, 6 minutes, 5

minutes, 4 minutes, 3 minutes, 2 minutes, and 1 minute. 60 is the smallest number that is divisible by every number from 1 to 6; that

is, it is the lowest common multiple of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

II. SHADOW CLOCKS

The earliest timekeeping devices were aliened on the sun. Egyptians divided their day into 14 parts – 10 daytime parts, 4 twilight parts: 2 in the morning and 2 in the evening. With the

shadow clock they could keep time precisely.

III. WATER CLOCKS

Water clocks, along with sundials, are likely to be the oldest time-measuring instruments, with the only exceptions being the vertical gnomon and the day-counting tally stick. Where and when they were first invented is not known,

and given their great antiquity it may never be. The bowl-shaped outflow is the simplest form of a water clock and is known to have existed in Babylon and

in Egypt around the 16th century BC.Plato invented the first alarm clock.

IV. CANDLE CLOCKS

You Jiangu's candle clock consisted of six candles made from 72 pennyweights of wax, each being 12 inches high, of uniform thickness, and divided into 12

sections each of one inch. Each candle burned away completely in four hours, making each marking 20 minutes. The candles were placed for protection inside cases made of a wooden frame with transparent horn panels in the

sides. Similar methods of measuring time were used in medieval churches and earlier, famously by King Alfred the Great of England, first by counting the number of candles of a specific size burnt, and later by use of a graduated

candle.

V. HOURGLASSES

The origin of the hourglass is unclear. Its predecessor the clepsydra, or water clock, may have been invented in

ancient Egypt and introduced to Europe by a monk named Luitprand, who served at the cathedral in Chartres, France. One thing is for sure, it is been used on Medieval ships for

navigation purposes.

VI. MECHANICAL CLOCKS

In Europe the first clockmakers were Christian monks. A man who is known as Pope Sylvester II builds the first clock in the

11th century. These timekeeping inventions became very popular all over Europe in the 14th century and they were

mainly used in Churches and Cathedrals.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was the “Father of Science” who

invented thetelescope and also discovered the four largest satellites of Jupiter. He also contributed a lot in the evolution of the timekeeping devices with his experiments on the Pendulum. He realized the racket of swing of a pendulum can be usedto regulate a clock. It took 50 years before finally the first pendulum clockwas built by a Dutch mathematician Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695).

Galileo Galilei

VII. POCKET WATCHES

The first pocket watch was invented by a German locksmith and a clockmaker Peter Henlein. The accuracy of that watch was 30

min/day as the minute hand was missing. Later Christiaan Huygens who invented the first pendulum clock added a balance spring to his pocket watch and it made it accurate to 5 min/day. This was the door to the accurate timekeeping and the revolution of the watchmaking

industry.

VIII. WRISTWATCHES

In 1904 a Brazilian aviator and a dear friend Alberto Santos-Dumont asked a famous watchmaker Cartier to make him a

wrist watch. Cartier made him a watch and named it after him – Santos. A few years later World War I came and it changed everything. Aviators and solders were the first once to wear

wrist watches as it was more convenient than a pocket watch. 

IX. QUARTZ WATCHES

A quartz watch uses an electronic oscillator that is regulated by a quartz crystal to keep time. This crystal oscillator creates a signal with very

precise frequency, so that quartz clocks are at least an order of magnitude more accurate than mechanical clocks. The first quartz clock was built in 1927 by Warren Marrison and J.W. Horton at Bell Telephone Laboratories. Since the 1980s when the advent of solid state digital electronics allowed them to be

made compact and inexpensive, quartz timekeepers have become the world's most widely used timekeeping technology, used in most clocks and watches,

as well as computers and other appliances that keep time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_Clock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candle_clock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hourglass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_Watch

SO, DO YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS?