THE ALARM CLOCK

 

In today’s fast paced world the need to know the time of day, every minute of the day, is imperative. Our lives are dictated by time and we are thus pressured to be on time for all our appointments, to fetch the kids from school, not be late for work, to take food out of the oven before it burns and a myriad of other reasons. In many circumstances just having a watch on our wrist is not enough, as a wrist watch (or a fob watch, for that matter) is silent and we may forget to meet certain deadlines if we are not reminded of them. It is for this reason that the alarm clock has become an increasingly important accessory in our busy lives.

The word clock is derived from the Celtic words ‘clocca’ and ‘clagan’, which both mean bell. A clock is distinguished from a watch by being what is known as a timepiece which can be on a church, positioned on a tall building, hung on a wall or placed on any surface, while a watch is something that is worn on one’s person. The history of timepieces, clocks and watches is an interesting one dating back many millennia; and is one of the oldest inventions of man. The earliest form of timepiece was the water clock, which dates as far back as the 16th century BC. Jumping forward in time, the next big invention was the sun dial, from which one could tell the time of day by the shadow cast from the central fin. This is known as solar time because of its use of the sun for the calculation of time. By the 13th century mechanical clocks became known in Europe. By around 1670 the pendulum clock had been invented; and 1840 saw the first electric clock. Alarm clocks in various forms have been around since ancient times in China, Greece and the Roman Empire, with chiming clocks becoming fashionable in Europe in the 14th century. These devices used such methods as pebbles dropping on metal to create a sound that could awaken a person from sleep. In modern times, alarm clock radios were developed, so that at a preset time a mechanism within a radio was activated so that the radio was switched on, thus waking people from sleep or alerting them to something they had to do at a specific time. Fast forward to the 21st century and one has a plethora of timepieces, clock and watch types from which to choose.

In today’s world of an invention a day, the alarm clock has been redesigned in many ways. Not only can one find any number of actual clocks which have a variety of alarm features such as ringing, music and the like, but the cell phones which we now find to be an indispensable part of our lives almost always have an inbuilt alarm which is a breeze to set. The even more up to date tablets which are now flooding the market also have this accessory.