Checking the time in today’s world has never been easier, whether it’s a glance at your BBHoraire wall clock, pulling your phone out of your pocket, or checking the watch strapped to your wrist. We have been privileged with access to accurate time measurement ranging from years down to milliseconds, but it was not always this way.
Egyptian Innovations
Once upon a time, in a land far away, were the sophisticated and intelligent Ancient Egyptians. The Egyptians were the founding fathers of many inventions and discoveries, and time measurement was one of them. As shared by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST): “Obelisks (slender, tapering, four-sided monuments) were built as early as 3500 BC”. These monuments enabled the Egyptians to partition their day into morning and afternoon. These were then transformed into portable Egyptian shadow clocks or sundials around 1500 BC, where a stick’s shadow fell across 12 ‘parts’ of a half-circle, marking each hour the sun was up. We have also found evidence of water clocks, or clepsydras, dating back to Egyptian tombs around 1500 BC and up until 500 AD in Eastern China . These water clocks functioned much like an hourglass: water would drip from one bowl to another at a steady rate, and the changing level of water in each bowl indicated the passage of time. Essentially, if you needed a sip of water, these would not be the best bowls to take it from.
Mechanical Marvels
The first mechanical clock was found in Italy around the 14th century and appeared suddenly in history, almost out of nowhere. These clock styles used weights and gears to keep the time but, like the water clocks, they were also difficult to regulate. The first accurately controlled clock was the Pendulum clock, utilizing oscillation, back-and-forth movements at a steady speed according to the Oxford Dictionary). These clocks had an error rate of less than 1 minute per day and eventually were refined to within 10 seconds every day. The final design of the pendulum clock around 1921 utilized slave and master pendulums, allowing the slave to give the push required for the master to maintain motion and move the clock hands (NIST). I'm sure many pendulum clock makers struggled with the hard work of creating these clocks and constantly fighting off the hypnotic sway.
Quartz and Modern Time
The final revolution of the clock used around the world today is the Quartz mechanism. Quartz is a crystal that, when stressed, by squeezing or bending it, generates an electric field. This electric field and its vibrations allow the operation of an electronic clock display. These styles of clocks are present in phones, watches, BBHoraire Time Zone clocks, and many more timekeeping products.
Time measurement is what keeps you from showing up late to the office Monday morning, and it also makes sure you don’t miss that pickleball game tomorrow evening. Without the relentless efforts of the past to produce accurate time measurement, our modern world would fall apart quickly.
Sources
A walk through time - world time scales. NIST. (2025, August 15). https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division/popular-links/walk-through-time/walk-through-time-world-time-scales