8 GREAT CLOCKS

TIMEKEEPING, TO BE CLEAR, is a human conceit. Natural cycles lack division into seconds, minutes and hours – indeed, into named days and months. The sun rises, zeniths and sets; the stars keep on turning. The myriad ancient devices invented to measure time mostly relied on these natural cycles and their regular oscillations. Count the oscillations and hey presto: you’re timekeeping.

The trouble with a simple, non-mechanical timekeeping device such as a sundial is that it’s useless if the Sun’s not shining. So, from thousands of years BCE, humans started developing mechanical devices – such as water clocks and hourglasses – to keep time. These grew over the centuries in ingenuity and accuracy: the water clocks made in China and the Muslim world in the 10th and 11th centuries are strikingly complex. The earliest European clockmakers were monks who wanted to regulate their strict work and prayer times. Pendulum clocks, wristwatches and marine chronometers followed in later centuries, then electric clocks, then timekeepers with quartz movements.