THE HISTORY OF TIMEKEEPING DEVICES
“Film a car speeding down a road. Speed up the image infinitely and the car disappears. So what proof do we have of its existence? Time is the only true unit of measure. It gives proof to the existence of matter. Without time, we don’t exist.” - Lucy (2014 Movie)
We measure time because time is a currency. In his book ‘Future Shock’, Alvin Toffler explains that if the last 50,000 years of man’s existence were divided into lifetimes of approximately 62 years each, our species would’ve lived 800 such lifetimes. Of the 800 lifetimes that mankind has been in existence, only during the last four lifetimes has it been possible to measure time with any precision. Our timekeeping devices have gone from being based on shadows cast by the sun, to the raw nature of gravity that causes sand to drain in an hourglass, to mechanical devices such as the pendulum, to the piezoelectric nature of quartz crystals and eventually all the way down to the electromagnetic waves radiated from little atoms of an element called cesium.
52 | Jansher Aidan Bakhshi Nongrum | Product Design
As we look at the development of timekeeping devices across history, it becomes apparent that crafting timekeeping devices were not an easy feat. Each required a substantial understanding of physics, a very high level of precision and extremely skilled craftsmanship to be able to function as intended.
