A Timeline of Timekeeping: A History of Clocks

From tracing the sun’s shadows to creating intricate weighted clocks that use the forces of gravity, timekeeping has been a part of life for thousands of years. So let’s travel back through the ages to see where it all started and recall some of history’s best timekeeping milestones. 

Sundials and Obelisks

The first timekeeping instruments were obelisks and sundials, which used shadows from the moving sun. The first known obelisks date back to 3500 BCE and were large, elongated stone monuments that stood erect from the ground. Each stone created a shadow that could differentiate between morning and afternoon depending on where the shadow landed. This concept was refined around 1500 BCE when sundials were used to harness the sun’s shadow more accurately. 

Water Clocks

But there were many issues with timekeeping purely through the sun, not least because this became impossible after sunset. Around 300-600 BCE in ancient Greece, another way of telling the time was invented — using water. Water clocks were used to document work days, plays, or orations. One of the most famous examples of this was an intricate hydraulic water clock invented by Archimedes. 

But how did these ancient water clocks work? The overall idea was that one container was filled with a measured amount of water, which — over time, precisely controlled by gears and weights — dripped into an empty container below. The amount of water indicated the time that had passed, often with a float to indicate portions of time. 

Candle Clocks and Hourglasses

The next update in the world of time-telling was a similar idea to the water clock but in the form of candles. These candle clocks came from China, where they were first referenced in a poem dating to 520 BCE. Measured candles often had notches embossed into the wax or were held on a holder with notches to indicate time passed as the wax melted. 

Candle clocks were also used widely throughout the medieval period. It was said that bakers and early-rising workers would often pierce their candles with heavy nails at a certain point, making the candle clock an early alarm clock as the nail would fall with a clunk and wake them up!

The Spring-Driven Clock

In 1510, German-born Peter Henlein produced the first spring-driven clock. This device changed the face of timekeeping by giving people a portable timepiece that allowed them to accurately tell the time wherever they went. 

Pendulum and Cuckoo Clocks

Although the design idea was originally conceived by Galileo Galilei in 1583, the pendulum-propelled clock was officially patented by Christiaan Huygens in 1657. The design used gravity, with a swinging pendulum driving the inner clockwork — leading to previously impossible levels of accuracy. 

Another iteration of this type of timekeeping mechanism came in the form of authentic German cuckoo clocks, which are thought to have originated in the 18th century. The invention of German Cuckoo Clocks is said to be the work of Franz Anton Ketterer, who started making Black Forest cuckoo clocks in the 1730s. 

Check out our range of authentic German cuckoo clocks here.

The Quartz Clock

Since the 18th century, there have been a number of other important timekeeping milestones. For example, in 1884, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was established, with Greenwich becoming the center point for the global time zone system. 

But it wasn’t until the 1900s that a battery-powered watch was invented. The quartz clock was a vision of Warren Marrison and J.W. Horton. The quartz clock works via a small battery that sends an electrical current to a quartz crystal through its circuit. This stone works to regularise the oscillator and creates a signal with precise frequency — allowing quartz clocks to be equally accurate in keeping time. 

Check out our range of quartz cuckoo clocks with music here.