The concept of the clock has likely been with humanity for ages. Over 3,500 years ago, ancient Egyptians devised the first water clocks and sundials. Prior to that, people may have tracked time using rudimentary devices that have not survived in the archaeological record, such as primitive sundials, or even without any device, says Rita Gautschy, an archaeo-astronomer at the University of Basel in Switzerland.
Determining the exact moment when humans began measuring time is challenging, according to Gautschy. By merely observing daily sunrise and sunset positions and the Sun's height in the sky, one could create a basic calendar. However, these early human attempts to comprehend time left no tangible evidence.
The oldest known sundial, dating back to 1500 B.C., originates from Egypt. It featured a simple vertical rod and a semicircular base divided into 12 segments. The staff's shadow indicated the approximate time of day. Other primitive sundials measured time by the length of the stick's shadow or the shadow's movement across the base, notes Gautschy.
"Once you've accomplished that, you can adjust it to fit different months," says Gautschy. To achieve true accuracy, sundials must consider both the time of year and latitude.
At night, ancient civilizations tracked time by observing the apparent movement of stars from east to west, Gautschy explains. To measure distinct units of time, they employed water clocks. These devices were either vessels with holes that allowed water to flow out at a consistent rate or containers filled by another vessel, with markings inside to represent time increments. The earliest water clocks have been discovered in Egypt and Babylon, dating back to 1500 B.C. In China, historical accounts attribute the invention of water clocks to the Yellow Emperor, Huangdi, a figure believed to have lived between 2717 and 2599 B.C., says Zheng-Hui Hwang, a mechanical engineer at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan, who has written about the history of ancient Chinese time-measuring devices.
Early Chinese water clocks, known as loukes, were likely runoff devices that divided the day into 100 equal segments from midnight to midnight. Over time, inventors enhanced these clocks by adding more water supply vessels or making adjustments to maintain a stable water flow, says Hwang.
By the early 700s AD, Tang Dynasty monks had developed an advanced mechanical clock powered by a water wheel. In 1194, Sung Su Song dynasty officials built upon this design, creating a 12-meter-tall mechanical clock powered by a water wheel, which functioned similarly to the mechanical clocks invented in Europe around 200 years later.
The ancient Chinese timekeeping system also divided each 24-hour day into two-hour segments, a method also found in ancient Japan and Korea, according to a 2004 article in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan.
In contemporary times, hours have consistent durations, but ancient societies employed more intricate systems, explains David Rooney, historian of technology, former curator of timekeeping at the Royal Greenwich Observatory. Some ancient systems divided daylight and nighttime into 12 segments each, resulting in "seasonal hours" that varied in length throughout the year and between day and night.
Rooney explains that for those whose religious practices or work depended on sunlight, patterns of light and dark held greater importance than the concept of universal time. Seasonal hours coexisted with universal hours until the 15th century in Europe and the 19th century in Japan. "We used to live in a much more complex, rich, and diverse time culture," Rooney comments.
Gautschy asserts that religion played a significant role in the standardization of time across cultures, over the year and day-to-day. In ancient Mesopotamia, Anatolia (currently Iraq and Turkey), and Greece, locals developed lunar calendars to track rituals and holidays. Egyptians, on the other hand, focused on the solar calendar and also had a calendar based on the star Sirius. Water clocks were used in Islamic cultures to monitor prayers and fasting, while Christians in 14th-century Europe developed the mechanical clock as a means of scheduling religious observances, says Rooney.
Throughout history, humans have been bound by time, long before the dawn of the industrial age. However, this hasn't always been a pleasant experience. When the ancient Romans installed their first public sundial in 263 B.C., the famous Roman playwright Plautus expressed his discontent through a character in one of his comedies. This character cursed the man who first discovered the concept of hours and placed a sundial in public view, tearing apart the day for the common man. The character reminisced about a time when hunger alone dictated meal times, instead of relying on the sun's position. The satirical portrayal of a city filled with sundials, leading to people withering away from hunger, is surprisingly relevant even today.
This sentiment, expressed over two millennia ago, resonates strongly with our modern lives. The notion of being enslaved by the clock is a sentiment that could be echoed in any 21st-century office or factory, illustrating the timeless struggle with time and its impact on our daily lives.
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