Sun Across the Sky

We live by the clock, it seems. From the time the alarm goes off until we set it again at night, we are constantly aware and constantly checking the time. Few of us wear wristwatches anymore, but our phones keep us on schedule. Our computers have clocks. Our vehicles have clocks. Our many kitchen appliances have clocks.

Once upon a time, it wasn't so.

Time keepers have been around for thousands of years, but the water clocks of the Egyptians and Zhou dynasty, sundials, candle clocks, and the hourglass are less precise than what we're used to. The sundial, for instance, can't even be used at night or on cloudy days. The hourglass may be precise, in taking exactly an hour to empty the top into the bottom, but if you don't see it happen, how do you know how much time has passed until you flip it?

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, precise time keeping wasn't necessary. Farmers' lives were lived by the seasons and the sun. Candles were expensive, so before the invention of electricity, people went to bed when the sun went down. Cows want to be milked daily, but they don't care whether it's seven o'clock or seven-fifteen.

It was only with the establishment of factories at the Industrial Revolution, when multiple shifts of people worked in one building, that time keeping became more precise. Think of the whistle going off at noon to signify lunch. The invention of the locomotive also required more precise timekeeping, so that passengers knew when to arrive at the platform.

Does the idea of missing your flight give you anxiety? Do you find yourself checking the clock every ten minutes as you wait for your workday to end?

In some ways our culture and society requires the precise timekeeping we're used to. But as we jump fully into summer, remember the days of your youth, when the only time that mattered was dark, the time to leave your friends and come home. And then, of course, you caught lightening bugs in the back yard.

Enjoy summer. Have so much fun that you forget to ask what time is it?