Telling Time Through the Ages

By Yoginutiritionista
  • Period: 3100 BCE to 3000 BCE

    Obelisk

    Egyptians used an obelisk, a vertical structure with four sides, as a shadow clock
  • Period: 1600 BCE to 1500 BCE

    Clepsydra

    Early Greeks and Egyptians designed this ~water clock~
  • Period: 350 BCE to 300 BCE

    Hour Glass

    Also known as the sand glass, first hour glass was found in a sarcophagus dated 350BCE and used commonly until 14th century
  • Period: 310 BCE to 300

    Sundial

    Babylonian, flat surface, 12-hr face, or dial. A gnomon, a vertical marker, fixed to the middle of the dial and cast a shadow showing the hour of the day. At this time, people learned to use the position of the moon, planets, and stars too.
  • Period: 1300 to 1301

    Mechanical Clocks

    Used physics principles of weight and balances to mark out increments of time over a 12-hour period. First ones were large and didn't keep accurate time.
  • Period: 1400 to 1450

    Watches

    Wearable time pieces appeared in Italy first. These were analog
  • Period: 1473 to 1543

    Heliocentric Systen

    Nicolaus Copernicus, Polish astronomoer, argued the earth operated in a sun-centered system. That is, the sun is the center of the Universe. He also hypothesized the earth revolved around the sun annually and every 24hrs it spun/rotated around its own axis.
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    Pendulum

    Rod-like weight that swings from side-to-side and controls a clock mechanism, increasing accuracy of the mechanical clock
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    Heliocentric Acceptable Standard

    By the 1700s, Copernicus' ideas were accepted
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    Marine Chronometer

    Used to determine longitude by means of celestial navigation. Chronometer was coined from the Greek words chronos (meaning time) and meter (meaning counter) in 1714 by Jeremy Thacker
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    Self-Winding Mechanism

    The first self-winding mechanism was invented for pocket watches in 1770 by Abraham-Louis Perrelet,[20] but the first "self-winding", or "automatic", wristwatch was the invention of a British watch repairer named John Harwood in 1923
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    Digital Watches

    first digital electronic watch, a Pulsar LED prototype in 1970, was developed jointly by Hamilton Watch Company and Electro-Data, founded by George H. Thiess
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    Smartwatches

    A wearable computer in the form of a wristwatch. Software may include digital maps, schedulers and personal organizers, calculators, and various kinds of watch faces. The watch may communicate with external devices such as sensors, wireless headsets, or a heads-up display. It may support wireless technologies like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and GPS.