The chart below compares the mythologies:

West Africans gave a child a special name according to the day of the week on which the child was born. This tradition was brought to the American South and Caribbean through slavery, and is the basis for the ditty below:

 

Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go,
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for a living,
But the child that is born on the Sabbath Day,
is bonny and blithe, good and gay.

 

Clocks

At first, the sun was the only way people could tell what time of day it was. When the sun was directly overhead in the sky, it was noon. When the sun was close to the horizon, it was either early morning (sunrise) or early evening (sunset). It was not very good if a more detailed time of day was needed.

Sundials

 

Around 3500 BCE, Egyptians began to construct huge obelisks similar to "Cleopatra's Needle", which served as primitive sundials.  As the sun moved across the sky, a shadow was cast on the obelisk, which was then marked out in sections, allowing people to clearly see the two halves of the day. By 1500 BCE, smaller, more refined sundials begin to appear. The shadows cast by the sun move in a clockwise (hence the definition of clockwise) direction for objects in the northern hemisphere.  However, the sun's path through the sky changes every day because the earth's axis is tilted.  On earth's yearly trip around the sun the North Pole is tilted toward the sun half of the time and away from the sun the other half. This means the shadows cast by the sun change from day to day.

However, sundials didn’t work at night or when there was heavy cloud cover.

 

Water Clocks

 

Around 1400 BCE, water clocks were invented in Egypt. The name for a water clock is clepsydra (pronounced KLEP-suh-druh). A water clock was made of two containers of water, one higher than the other. Water traveled from the higher container to the lower container through a tube connecting the containers. The containers had marks showing the water level, and the marks told the time. Water clocks worked better than sundials because they told the time at night as well as during the day. They were also more accurate than sundials.

 

 

 

 

Hourglass

 

About 700 BCE, hourglasses began to appear.  Fine sand poured through a tiny hole from an upper compartment into a lower compartment. When the sand had finished pouring, it was turned upon its head and the sand was forced to run back again. Hourglasses did would not freeze like water clocks, it would not spill over, it did not need refilling and could be made very cheaply.  Although hourglasses are no longer in use, the principle of the hour glass still functions for short time needs such as egg timing.

It was an ancient custom to put an hourglass, as an emblem that the sands of life had run out, into coffins at burials.

 

Mechanical Clocks

 

Peter Henlein of Nuremberg, Germany, invented the 'spring-powered' clock, around

1500-1510. However, the clocks would slow down as the mainspring unwound.

Nearly 150 years later, in 1656, Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch scientist,  invented the pendulum clock, which used weights and a swinging pendulum. These clocks were much more accurate.

As clocks became more reliable, they were installed in church towers and could be seen from the outside.  This was useful for the common people, since clocks were beyond their purchasing power. Usually a bell sound was made on the hour. Before mechanical clocks, bells were rung to call the faithful to prayer. The word “bell” in Latin is "cloca", in French “cloche”, in German “glocke” and the Saxons used “clugga”.  From this combination we get the word “clock”.

 

Pocket watches

 

In the 16th century, pocket watches had entered the scene.  The advantage of the pocket watch was that the watch could travel with the wearer.  Pocket watches were worn around the neck or carried in a pocket. With the improvements of the mechanism to run a watch, pocket watches became more popular. Further improvements in the 18th century were using jewels as bearings and oil to lubricate and smooth the movement of the watch’s hands.

 

Wrist watches

 

Around the turn of the 20th century, the good old pocket watch got competition. The Swiss were early adopters of the wrist watch, and after WWI, they made significant gain into world markets.  During WWII, the watch companies in the Allied countries turned their attention to the war production for bomb "fuses" (timers), specialized navigation timers, and ship chronographs. The Swiss, being "neutral", had an advantage because of less competition and they maintained this lead for many years. By the 1950s, the Swiss had perfected complicated wrist watches such as chronographs, automatic winding watches, and day-date watches.

 

By the 1970's, 'Liquid Crystal Display' (LCD) watches emerged and watches the world over were manufactured by mass production.

 

Quartz Crystal Clocks

 

Quartz crystal clocks were introduced in 1920. It was discovered that when voltage, or electricity is applied, the quartz crystal vibrates or oscillates at a very constant frequency. The vibration makes the clock's hands move very precisely.

 

Atomic Clocks

 

In 1967, atomic clocks were invented. Atomic clocks work by measuring the oscillations of atoms – cesium atoms, to be exact. Cesium is a metal that's used because its atoms always move at the same speed. Measure any cesium atom and it will always produce the same reading. That reading is then used to tell the time, down to a fraction of a second. These clocks have an error ratio of 1 second for every 1.4 million years.

 

Countries around the world send their official time from their standard atomic clocks to the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Paris, France. The French organization gathers these official times and takes a weighted average to produce the planet's official time.

 

Scientists are now working on producing a fountain clock. In 1999, a cesium fountain atomic clock was developed which is off by only one second every 20 million years. This clock is the most accurate in the world.

 

Keeping time in 21^st century

 

In the 21^st century, the time of day can be found everywhere.  Automatic Banking Machines and stores record the time and date on their receipts.  Churches still have time pieces as do important buildings like the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa.  Bill boards can be seen displaying the time, date and temperature. Cell phones, computers and automobiles all have built-in clocks.  And of course, it is still possible to look in the sky, see the sun overhead, and know it is noon - just as our ancestors did before time was recorded.

 

Facts and Figures on Timekeeping

 

Lunar and Solar configurations

 

· Figures for the lunation: 29 d, 12 h, 44 min, 2.8 sec

That's how long it takes the moon to rotate once.

 

Figures for 12 lunations: 354 d, 8 h, 48 min, 34 sec

 

· Figures for the solar year: 365 d, 5 h, 48 min, 46 sec

· That's how long it takes for the Earth to travel around the sun,

ending up exactly where it began.

 

 

 

Go to Time Keeping Part 3

Origins of Timekeeping—Part 2

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