A Brief History of Time Keeping

Know much about horology? I didn't, not until visiting the National Watch and Clock Museum in Columbia, PA.

We clocked in at 1:59 last Tuesday afternoon, and stayed precisely one hour and a half - which I might have noticed, even without the souvenir time card, if I had glanced at the sturdy Timex I wear on my left wrist. Today's young people don't wear watches; have you noticed? Many just rely on their mobile phones to tell them the time.

Not many of our ancestors had access to either.

Five thousand years ago - as we would measure it - if the sun and stars were not enough, you could get extra help from a sundial.

Egyptians and Greeks used water clocks - some of which worked like your mother's egg timer. I saw several that were ceramic, with precisely placed rows of holes that allowed the water to flow out at an even rate, or allowed one vessel to sink within another. Creative. There were also several versions of fire clocks; some involved incense, or candles, burning at predictable rates.

Religious folks were some of those most dedicated to the measurement of time, as a means to mark off prayers and keep the devout on schedule.

The Chinese built all kinds of mechanical devices to measure time. The Japanese had a system all their own, built to mark off the parts of a day that lengthened and shortened with the seasons - so a summer hour had to be longer than a winter one. Later, the Italians also marched to their own beat, measuring off time according to the church's notions of the day long after the rest of the world had chosen a different system.

As more modern time keeping devices came along, they measured hours by dividing them into small increments, and people began to see time as ticking rather than flowing.

The notion of time zones began in America, as railway administrators grew weary of tracking a multitude of schedules, each company usually operating according to the time in its home city. That's why the old railroad stations had so many clocks.

One November day in 1883 was called the day with two noons as clocks and schedules were synchronized according to a consistent plan - it was to keep trains from colliding, or, worse, passengers from missing their connections any more than absolutely necessary!

Europe followed, reluctantly, but for many of the same reasons. Less than thrilled at the thought of measuring all things by Greenwich, the French only reluctantly declared the time in Paris according to GMT, but legally stating that this was some minutes and an additional 11 seconds off of ['real'] Paris Time.

A great deal of energy went into how to track time at sea, as well - crucial for determining one's location on the earth in those days long before GPS. You had to know more or less where you were in order to minimize dangers and manage resources wisely (you know, not run out of food and water!)

Wristwatches - originally just a passing fashion for women - didn't come into widespread use until soldiers in the nineteenth century discovered just how handy they could be in the field. They no longer seemed effeminate, and demand grew throughout the twentieth century.

Picture - I didn't get a good image of the grandfather clocks (known, before the 1876 song, as 'tall case' or 'eight-day' clocks) at the National Clock and Watch Museum. But another blogger did, so here's his image. I love the phases - faces - of the moon! Some of the moons on the NCWM clock faces were very engaging.