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I believe it was because of the railroads that the use of time zones became standardized. Before that, time was kept locally and two places just a few miles East or West of one another could be operating on slightly different times.
In England, there were door knockers, who would go from house to house to announce with a wrap on the door that it was time to get up and get about the daily activities.
I still have my grandfather's Ball railroad watch that he used as an engineer in West Virginia.
Do not dismiss hourglasses as well. Not exactly to show time, but to measure the passage of time. Used religiously onboard ship during the sailing age. Probably used to time work shifts as well during that time.
Building on that, life aboard ships was -- and still is -- strictly regulated by time. For one thing, knowing the correct time is vital to accurate solar/stellar navigation, so they had to be "religious" about hour-glass operation. Also, crew work periods, or watches, were broken down into five 4-hour periods and two 2-hour periods (called "dog-watches"). The reason for this breakdown is a topic for another thread.
Time signals were given by ringing the ship's bell -- one sharply-struck "ding" for every thirty minutes that had elapsed since the beginning of the watch. Four hours equals eight bells, so now you know the origin and meaning of the term. Too, eight bells always signals the end of the watch. This fact is used in ceremonial occasions by many organizations today. (The only exception is the first "dog-watch" which ends at four bells, aka 1800 hours)
Even-numbered ringy-dingys were struck as closely-spaced doubles ("ding-ding"), so that the crew could differentiate them from "dings" caused by the natural motion of the ship. This technique worked extremely well for all but "One Bell", rung thirty minutes into the watch. Here the sharpness of the strike had to be relied upon to distinguish it from motion-induced dings. From there forward, there was always at least one double-ring.
Last edited by Nighteyes; 06-16-2011 at 12:36 PM..
Factory whistles, church bells, town criers ("Three o'clock and all is well!") and several other signals have been used for the mass communication of time.
In the summer, in 16th century England, it was dawn to dusk with a lot of breaks:
The labouring man will take his rest long in the morning; a good piece of the day is spent afore he come at his work; then he must have his breakfast, though he have not earned it at his accustomed hour, or else there is grudging and murmuring; when the clock smiteth, he will cast down his burden in the midway, and whatsoever he is in hand with, he will leave it as it is, though many times it is marred afore he come again; he may not lose his meat, what danger soever the work is in. At noon he must have his sleeping time, then his bever in the afternoon, which spendeth a great part of the day; and when his hour cometh at night, at the first stroke of the clock he casteth down his tools, leaveth his work, in what need or case soever the work standeth.
Bishop of Durham, Pilkington circa 1570
Reviving this topic, since the philosophy forum had a question about calendars and their seeming arbitrariness based on religious and cultural influences. Thought this would be good fodder to coincide with it as it gives perspective
Martin Gardner, of Mathematical Games fame in Scientific American, described the man who walked past a jewelry store every morning and set his watch by the clock in the store window. He then proceeded to his job at city hall, where his responsibility included ringing the municipal bell at noon. At which time, every day, the jeweler would reset his clock in the window.
Having read this thread, it just makes me think how much I am a product of modern times. Reading the descriptions makes temporal reality in the past seem much slower than what we are used to, even in the 20th century. Life has truly become faster, don't you agree?!
Reviving this topic, since the philosophy forum had a question about calendars and their seeming arbitrariness based on religious and cultural influences. Thought this would be good fodder to coincide with it as it gives perspective
Calendars are not arbitrary per see. Knowing what month it is important for agriculture and the religious practices often spring from that(pray for a bounty harvest/give thanks for one). This is what leads to their creation. What is arbitrary is the number of months in a year and how to handle the fact that the earth’s year(time it takes to go around the sun) is 365 and1/4 days long, what day is the first day of the year and what is used to track the year (sun or moon).
Anyway the reason why they developed calendars is because the ancients looked at the stars and in about 1 year the stars should be in about the same position as they are in a given day at a given time. Knowing this is a great benefit to agriculture because relying on weather to judge when to plant can be misleading (i.e. a warm spell in March that then gets followed by a cold spell that kills your crop)
If you knew it was March,you would have been very wary about planting so soon. You might say put out an early crop but held some seeds in reserve. Or, if things are really beneficial you can say grow more than one crop in a year if the growing season is long enough by picking your entire crop by a certain time and putting out another.
Also knowing when to stop planting and when to gather what you can before the weather turns cold a good thing. You don't want to leave it on the vine to rot and you can focus on preserving food for winter.
By the way, "Longitude" by Dava Sobel has to be one of my favorite all-time books. It lays out the urgency for the creation of the chronometer in order to make for accurate navigation. You'd think a book about clocks would be boring. It is anything but.
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