A Time before Clock and Watches A Series (part 1)
How Time Was Measured Before the Clock
How many times have you wondered, What time is it? and turned to your wrist only to find you forgot to put on your watch. We have become so programmed to know what time it is and schedule our lives around it that it is second nature to bend your arm, turn your wrist and get the answer. It has not always been so easy, or even necessary as you will see by looking back to a time before clocks and watches.
Like Night and Day
The precision with which we measure time today is light years away from how it was done, not so long ago. Time was once measured completely by the universe around us and still is in a sense when you understand the science and physics behind the measurement of time and what makes a clock work (more on this in part 2). What earlier civilizations knew and relied upon each day was that the sun came up and went down and that block of time became a day. To measure greater expanses, the moon and its reliable cycles were also observed. The moon was used to measure the time period which came to be known as a month more technically a lunar month of 28...