Clocks have been around forever, they meet our need to consistently measure intervals of time during the day, along with the month and year.Sundials, Water Clocks, Candle Clocks and Hourglasses are some of the first and oldest, of human inventions. Sundials and Water Clocks are known to have existed in Egypt and Babylon around the 16th century BC.Sundials require the sun to shine and they do not work at night, however, they do measure local solar time with reasonable accuracy.  Water Clocks, when calibrated with a Sundial did work at night and were most accurate and commonly used until replaced in the 17th century in Europe by the Pendulum Clock. 

The Salisbury Cathedral Water Clock, located in West England is the oldest in the World and dates back to 1386.The Wells Cathedral Water Clock, located in the Science Museum in London, dates back to 1392 and most probably was made by the same craftsman as the Salisbury Clock.These two Clocks / Timepieces are still going strong today.

Spring driven clocks appeared in the 15th Century.The chamber clock given to Peter the Good, Duke of Burgundy, around 1430, is the earliest existing spring driven clock.The Germanisches National Museum now houses the clock.

Early clock dials did not use minutes and seconds.  In the 15th and 16th centuries, clock making flourished, but it wasn’t until 1584, Jost Burgi, perfected the accuracy of clocks to be correct to within one minute a day.  An Observational clock was placed in the Istanbul Observatory sometime between 1577 – 1580 and was described as “a mechanical clock with three dials which show the hours, the minutes, and seconds.”

The Pendulum Clock was invented sometime after 1656 and Christiaan Huygens is usually credited as the inventor.After calculating the formula that related time to pendulum length, he had the first pendulum-driven clock made.Designers were attracted to this new style of clock and it was widely accepted.Grandfather Clocks were developed in 1670 or 1671 by William Clement, an English clockmaker, to house the pendulum and clock works.

The major push for reliability and accuracy of clocks was the importance of navigation, ships needed precise time-keeping in order to find exact longitude.A ships navigator could know their exact position if their clock gained or lost less than 10 seconds per day.  Pendulum clocks could not be used due to the rocking ship.An award in the amount of 20,000 pounds was offered by Great Britain for anyone that could determine longitude accurately, John Harrison claimed the reward, in 1761, with his invention of the H5 clock which was in error by less than 5 seconds over 10 weeks.

Eli Terry received his first patent for a clock on November 17, 1797.The American Clock making industry reconizes him as their founder.In 1840 the first electric clock was patented by Alexander Bain a Scottish clockmaker, in 1841 he patented the electromagnetic pendulum.

Due to the amazing technologies we now have, clocks, today, have no clockwork parts at all.The behavior of quartz crystals, vibration of tuning forks, the use of batteries, quantum vibrations of atoms are all different ways we measure time.Winding has become something of the past. 
Atomic clocks are among the most accurate time (looses 1 second in 100 million years) and frequency standards known, they are used in global navigation satellite systems such as GPS, and are used as primary standards for international time distribution services, to control the frequency of television broadcasts.This accuracy is now part of our daily lives as this technology is now becoming common place with the public. 

Wristwatches became popular in the 1920s, most watches were pocket watches, which often had covers and were carried in a pocket and attached to a watch chain or watch fob.Aviator watches were developed to aid pilots by having information readily available to them on their wrists, instead of in their pockets.  Of course, in those days, they were flying Bi-Planes with open Cockpits. 

In March 2008, physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) demonstrated a quantum logic clock based on individual mercury and aluminium ions. These two clocks are the most accurate that have been constructed to date, with neither clock gaining nor losing at a rate that would exceed a second in over a billion years.NIST physicists have built a second, enhanced version of the quantum logic clock, in Februray 2010, using a single aluminum atom. It offers more than twice the precision of the original and is considered the most precise clock in the world..

We live in Great Times!

Reference:
wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock

 

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