The History of Time

Welcome back my fellow learners, today we are going to learn about that much used but taken for granted clock, and how time and clocks were first thought of.

Minute Hand

Jost Burgi In 1577, first thought of and invented the minute hand. His invention was to be part of a clock made for an avid astronomer called Tycho Brahe, who required an accurate clock when stargazing.

Pendulum

Christian Huygens In 1656, first invented the pendulum clocks to enable them to keep more accurate time.

Wrist Watch

The first portable, however, inaccurate timepiece was invented in Nuremberg, Germany in 1504, by Peter Henlein. The first person reported to wear a watch was Blaise Pascal in 1623, he was a French mathematician and philosopher. He attached his watch to his wrist with the aid of a piece of string.

Quartz

The Smithsonian states that in 1927, Canadian Warren Marrison, who was a telecommunications engineer, was looking for a reliable frequency standard at Bell Telephone Laboratories. Using earlier work in piezoelectricity, Warren created a large, extremely accurate clock based on the vibrations of a crystal nestled within an electrical circuit.

Origins of the word Clock

Clock is actually French meaning bell. The Latin is glocio, Saxon is clugga and the German is glocke.

Standard Time

This was created in 1878 by Sir Sanford Fleming.

Alarm Clocks

A prototype of an alarm clock was first created by the Greeks in 250 BC. They constructed a water clock where the rising waters would keep time and hit a mechanical bird that created a whistling noise.

The first mechanical one was invented in 1787, by Levi Hutchins of Concord, New Hampshire. But his could only sound at 4 am.

So there you have it my lovlies, my quick run-down on the history of time and clocks.