Now Reading: Before clocks, sundials and water clocks tracked time
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Before clocks, sundials and water clocks tracked time
Mechanical clocks did not invent the idea of time. Ancient societies used sundials before 1500 BCE, water clocks, and celestial observations to divide the day, sources report. The gradual development of mechanical…
The Story in Brief
Mechanical clocks did not invent the idea of time. Ancient societies used sundials before 1500 BCE, water clocks, and celestial observations to divide the day, sources report. The gradual development of mechanical timekeeping built on this foundation.
Around 1092, Chinese engineer Su Song's clock may qualify as the first mechanical clock, though some historians reserve the term for later European devices like a weight-driven clock built in England in 1283. A major accuracy leap came with Christiaan Huygens' pendulum clock in 1656 and his balance wheel in 1675, enabling portable timepieces.
The Indian Opinion
This story tempts a lazy narrative that mechanical clockmakers were lone geniuses inventing time from scratch. The truth is more incremental: they refined age-old methods of observation. The real test for accuracy was not philosophical but practical, how to keep time on a rolling ship. Huygens' balance wheel answered that. Still, one might ask: have we traded the ancient sundial's patience for the clock's tyranny? The question is not who first knew the hour, but who decided what the hour should mean.
Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com
This story was synthesised by AI from the source linked above.
