From Sunbeams to Selfies: A Timey-Wimey Tale of Telling Time
Now, I want you to imagine life without deadlines, alarms and constant “What time is it?”, just like our ancestors used to before smartphones. Let’s talk about timekeeping. I will tell you about sundials first and bring you to our times.
It all started long ago, Egyptian and Greeks were pondering such things. That was about 3500 BC, those people brought a simple stick, they called gnomon , and could now correctly determine the sun’s path and track the shadow with some hundred percent accuracy. This was the humankind’s initial step to tame time.
A few millennia later, timekeeping went up a notch. The Egyptians made the first shadow clocks out of green schist that soundlessly gazed through millennia in the sands of time. On the other side of the Mediterranean, the brilliant Aristarchus of Samos perfected the first hemispherical sundial, a mathematical marvel, as well as an elegant sun-tracking clock.
Sundials ruled the world for long years after that. They were poetic, relying entirely on sunlight. Musk’s invention, they breathlessly watched all of the important events of history, and throughout peaceful and violent centuries, never ceased to tick.
However, there was a rival. The mechanical clock appeared, steaming out of the bowels of European monasteries and rushing to conquer the world. The high clocks with their intricate gears and swinging pendulums were more accurate, releasing people from the prison of the sun.
The distinctive sound of the ticking was heard in the endless halls of human progress, signaling the age of punctuality. But even these wonder machines were not completely original. To adjust the time, people used the clock as a specimen-image.
A big change happened in the 17th century: Christiaan Huygens made the pendulum clock. This engineering miracle, driven by a swinging pendulum, made a major difference in timekeeping. Its ticks moved the beat of life. They governed life in cheerful markets and in magnificent European mansions.
Today, digital gadgets encompass us. Nonetheless, sundials and clocks serve as a memory of our desire for ordnance in time. They are more outdated than your smartphone. However, their principles of timekeeping are identical: to be in command and to understand.
A few minutes later, when you study time on a mobile phone or smartwatch, remember all of this. The sultry shadow devices and this particular army of consumptively digitals in their timeless story – from shadow selfies. The most key moment is not on the screen. This, and the memories we spend and store.
