History of past time

Telling time through the ages

How do we tell time on a cloudy day? You check your phone or watch. Several thousand years ago watches did not exist.  They would glance at the sun in order to get some idea of time, however, on cloudy days or at night, that was impossible. Yet, even during bad weather sun or no sun, people needed to plant their crops, hold ceremonies for living or dead, attend meetings or even raid neighbors and because of these many different ways to tell time was invented. The sundial was the first being used in Egypt, 1500 B.C, its principle was very simple. When the sun moves across the sky, the shadows it would cast also move. Marking equal divisions around a selected rock, tree or stick, early humans could get some idea of the time. However, the weather still proved to be a problem because the sun was still needed to cast that shadow to inform them of the time. The Egyptians then proceeded to invent the water clock. It contained a reservoir of known volume that would drain through a hole of a certain size. The water clock or clepsydra gradually became more complicated throughout the years to come. The hourglass was a later invented to the various devices that existed before the 18th century. Two glass bulbs, one filled with a certain amount of sand, the bulbs joined by a narrow neck passage. It took an hour for the sand to flow from the top bulb to the bottom one. However, history has learned from its many mistakes in the invention to tell time that we have finally learned today, to make a device to tell us our much precious and needed time.