Thought for Today

[supersparky]

Maybe he had a sundial, do you reckon?

[Keith Morris]

How did the man who made the first clock know what time it was?🤔

He asked his wife---she knew everything

[Newcastle George]

Maybe he had a sundial, do you reckon?

That wouldn't show him daylight saving time.

George

[supersparky]

George, daylight saving time = clock fiddlers time.
It wasn't even considered until the 20th Century. Pretty sure we had clocks before that.

[T1 Terry]

How did the man who made the first clock know what time it was?

He rang time and the voice on the other end said "at the third stroke, the time will be ....., beep, beep beep" Before that it was guess work really and established as Greenwich Mean Time with no explanation of what it was being mean about ..... probably p*ssed off about being wrung at all hrs to ask what the time was .....

T1 Terry

[Greynomad]

Maybe he had a sundial, do you reckon?

That wouldn't show him daylight saving time.

George

Yes, George, it would.
As the days got progressively longer and shorter, the sundial would change the time accordingly. It simply would be an incremental change each day, rather than a one-hour shift on a specific date. Ask any dairy farmer. The cows don’t go by the clock, but by the position of the sun.
But the question still remains: how did the first sundial maker know what time the sun came up?

The Bible says Jesus gave up his spirit at the third hour, in other words, nine o’clock by modern timekeeping.
There were no clocks then, only sundials. Who decided it was six o’clock when the sun rose, and therefore nine o’clock rather than just the third hour of daylight?

[BernieQ2]

GMT...UTC.
Bernie.

[Greynomad]

Shall I put you all out of your misery?

The maker of the first clock consulted a sundial.
He used it to determine when Noon occurred, and worked from there. Sundials had for a thousand years or more been marked with hours (dunno how or when that was decided)!
When the gnomon (the pointer bit) casts its shortest or no shadow, that’s noon (wherever you are on the planet).
Now, time zones are another question entirely….
(viz. International Date Line and its meanderings, China, Broken Hill, etc…)
Not going there.

[Dot]

I have a good tale of how the indig told the time, no clocks or sun dials but this is an around the campfire story.

[T1 Terry]

Shall I put you all out of your misery?

The maker of the first clock consulted a sundial.
He used it to determine when Noon occurred, and worked from there. Sundials had for a thousand years or more been marked with hours (dunno how or when that was decided)!
When the gnomon (the pointer bit) casts its shortest or no shadow, that’s noon (wherever you are on the planet).
Now, time zones are another question entirely….
(viz. International Date Line and its meanderings, China, Broken Hill, etc…)
Not going there.

But a 24 hr clock starts at midnight and a sundail isn't very reliable after sundown

T1 Terry