How did ancient civilizations record time?

How did ancient civilizations record time?

After the Sumerians, the Egyptians were the next to formally divide their day into parts something like hours. Slender, tapering, four-sided monuments (Obekusjs) were built as early as 3500 BC. Their moving shadows formed a kind of sundial, enabling citizens to partition the day into two parts by indicating noon. They also showed the year’s longest and shortest days, when the shadow at noon was the shortest or longest of the year.

Another Egyptian shadow clock or sundial, possibly the first portable timepiece, came into use around 1500 BC to measure the passage of ‘hours’. This device divided a sunlit day into 10 parts, plus two ‘twilight hours’ in the morning and evening. When the long stem with five variably spaced marks was oriented east and west in the morning, an elevated crossbar on the east end cast a moving shadow over the marks. At noon, the device was turned in the opposite direction to measure the afternoon ‘hours’.

The Greeks invented a prototype of the alarm clock around 250 BC. They also built a water clock where clock where the raising waters would both keep time and eventually hit a mechanical bird that triggered an alarm.

In 1908, the Westclox Clock Company is issued a patent for the Big Ben alarm clock. The outstanding feature on this clock is the bell-back, which completely envelopes the inner case back and is an integral part of the case. The bell-back provides loud alarm.