Ways people have told time throughout the ages

Obelisk

3000 BCE

"Early Egyptians told time by the shadow case by the sun on an unmoving object. They used an obelisk, a vertical unmoving structure with four sides, as a shadow clock, placing it in the sun so that it could cast a shadow. The shadow showed the position of the sun throughout the day."

Water Clock (clepsydra)

1500 BCE

"The early Greeks and Egyptians designed a water clock (also known as a clepsydra) that used the flow of water to measure time." Although no one is sure when the first water clock was created, the oldest known example is dated back to 1500 BCE, from the tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep I. Around 325 BCE, water clocks began to be used by the Greeks, who called this device the clepsydra (water thief). One of the uses of the water clock in Greece was for the timing of speeches in law courts.

Burning Oil

1400 BCE

Some cultures mark the passage of time by measuring time it takes to burn oil, incense and candles.

Sundial

300 BCE

"People in Babylonia had started using a sundial, a flat circle on which a 12-hour clock face, or dial, had been written. Adapting methods used by the early Egyptians, Babylonians attached a gnomon, a vertical marker, to the middle of the dial. The gnomon cast a shadow on the dial as the sun's position changed throughout the daylight hours. Where the shadow fell on the dial showed the time of day."

Incense Clock

960

"Dating to the Song dynasty (960-1279), the incense clock spread from China to Japan and other Asian locales. Although each version involved the burning of incense to track time, the system was often different. Sometimes the clock had various colors of smoke to signal the time, others burned to markers or alarms, while a few even involved different incense smells so the user would be olfactorily aware of the passage of time."(http://www.historyofwatch.com/clock-history/clock-timeline/)

Hourglass

1001

"While the first hourglass is sometimes dated to 8th century France, it’s unclear exactly when this timepiece emerged. The sand clock, as it's also known, really took off in the 14th century, when marine sandglasses were especially common on ships to track time. And that familiarity made them great symbols for the fleetingness of mortal time in art and tombstones, a use that continues to the present."

Mechanical clocks

1300

"Mechanical clocks represented a big step forward in telling time. These clocks used physics principles of weights and balances to mark out increments of time over a 12-hour period. The first mechanical clocks appeared by 1300 CE in Europe. They were large in order to house the weights required and didn't keep accurate time"

First watches

1400

"The first watches appeared in Italy in the early 1400s and measured time through a system of coiled springs. The time-keeping mechanism was built inside a metal ball with a lid that could be raised to see the tim, and the entire watch was placed in a pocket or hung from a belt. As improvements were made to coiled springs and mechanisms, watches became smaller and more accurate."

Invention of Pendulums

1600

"By the 1600s, European scientists and inventors had discovered that adding a pendulum, a rod-like weight that swings from side to side and controls a clock mechanism, greatly increased a clock's accuracy and preciseness and allowed it to record minutes and seconds as well as hours."

Lantern Clock

1601

Shaped with a basilica-like dome, the lantern clock became popular in 17th century England, the first clock to be common in homes. The brass timepiece operated with interior weights, and happened to emerge alongside a newly established middle class that was interested in keeping its own time, without having to strain their ears for the church bells.

Congreve Clock

1808

"An invention patented in 1808 by Sir William Congreve, the Congreve clock is an elaborate machine that uses the 15-second roll of a brass ball down a zig-zagging track to move the hands on the timepiece. Over the course of a day, the ball would roll back and forth on the track 5760 times. Unfortunately, as National Museums Scotland points out, it wasn't quite successful, as any bit of dust on the track threw off the ball’s timing.