What time is it? What do you do when someone asks you that question? Chances are you look at your watch or phone. Why is that? How did time get there? Well, I’m going to tell you. 3 or 4 minutes in the future (if you keep reading) you will be able to identify the key milestones in the history of time.
The first time
First, lets go back in time. Way, way back, into prehistory. Imagine if you had asked someone then the same question. What would be the answer?
When should we sow, when should we reap? The seasons gave us the answer. So, the answer would be, for instance, Harvest Time. Or it would’ve been whatever season depending on the orbit of the earth around the sun – the year. Although to be fair, from their perspective the sun travelled round the Earth.
That other celestial orb that travelled around the earth was useful too. The moon waxed and waned a tad over 12 times a year. Now we could separate the year even further and become more successful at hunting, gathering and then later farming.
So, about 12 thousand years ago, we could now cultivate crops and grow them exactly where we wanted, soil and climate permitting. Now we could settle down. We formed our first static communities. Villages became towns, which became cities. Eventually kingdoms formed, with kings to rule over them. These rulers needed to control their subjects and how they worked, to ensure the work got done. The carrot and the stick were both used and a new form of time came about. Work and rest days.
A time to work and play
Festivals divided up time, into when you could eat drink and be merry, provided you worked to the bone in between. The week of 7 days also arrive with each day give a special name. Oh, and you could rest on the seventh. You’re welcome.
The day is an obvious unit of time, but it wasn’t until the Ancient Egyptians, that we measured the time of day. Sundials were used to track the sun across the sky. The Greeks were the first to divide the day up into 12 divisions or hours. One slight problem. Daytime changed in length every day, due to the tilt of the Earth on it’s axis. The length of daytime and nighttime is only the same twice a year, at the equinoxes.
This problem ticked on until the 14th Century when a bright spark had the audacity to invent the clockwork mechanism. Now we could really tell the time. We had proper hours, minutes and seconds. Punctuality and being on time were good traits to have.
Be on time
Next, we have the industrial revolution. Mass travel and the railways caused another problem. You see, back then we had local time. The time was different in Manchester than it was in London. The position of the sun at its highest point, determined at what point noon was and that is very different depending on where you are. That’s fine if it takes you a week to commute between two cities, but it’s a huge problem when you have train timetables.
This prompted another great leap forward – standardised time or Greenwich Meantime here in the UK. Now you could ask anyone in Britain what time it was and they could give you the same answer.
So, there you have it, job done. Now you can answer the question with certainty – what time is it? Or can you?
When NASA started sending satellites into space, they quickly realised that they had to reset the onboard clocks continuously. This is because time slows down in space. Now that would eventually really screw your Satnavs up. So, time is different where you are in the universe.
Well, here we are 3 or 4 minutes into the future (thanks for reading fellow time traveller). Now you can identify the major events on time’s timeline. But are you any more certain than our ancestors in the fields 12,000 years ago, when I ask?
What time is it?