
The Hourglass: An underrated invention (2013) - icanhackit
http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2013/07/a-very-underrated-invention.html
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tpeo
I was asking myself how people measured time before mechanical clocks, and I
completely forgot about hourglasses.

I wonder if the development of mechanics was hindered by the lack of
standardized time-keeping. I've read that Galileo used his own pulse to
measure pendular motion, and I find that highly impractical.

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icanhackit
The part of the article I was hoping to emphasize with the original title
(IIRC it was _Tamper-resistant time-keeping_ ) was this:

 _the sandglass was the primary means of fair timekeeping. The sand glass was
visible to all in a room, and it could only be dramatically and obviously
“reset”, it couldn’t be fudged like a mechanical clock._

By virtue of being highly visible and slow to reset thus difficult to sabotage
made it an ideal tool not just for time-keeping in general, but dedicating
time to activities where fairness and equality were important. The simplicity
of the mechanism hides the sophistication of its action - being an auditable
accounting system.

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hencq
If you're interested in this, the absolutely wonderful book "The Discoverers"
by Daniel Boorstin goes into a lot of detail on how humankind discovered time
and developed methods to keep time.

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canjobear
More here:
[http://szabo.best.vwh.net/synch.html](http://szabo.best.vwh.net/synch.html)

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Thiz
Put some water instead of sand, a small turbine in the neck, and you may have
an interesting power generator. Perhaps a portable light bulb?

~~~
agumonkey
A variant of gravitylight.org/

