Did you know?

1. How people told time in the past has always held the interest of those who love watches now. Our way of telling time, with all its complications and intricate movements, seems much easier compared to what those who relied on the sun, burning of incense and movement of water had to do. While we look at the face of a dial, they scrutinised the complicated mechanisms of the incense clock, the water clock and the sundial. The sundial is possibly the most famous of time-telling devices from the Egyptian and Babylonian past where the movement of the sun and the shadow therefore cast by the style on the horizontal surface marked with lines to indicate hours told the time to the reader. But be warned, all sundials had to be aligned with the axis of the Earth’s rotation to be accurate! The incense clock from China and Asia had specialised sensors that held candlesticks or incense with a known rate of combustion and was calibrated as such to tell time as the incense burnt down. Some of the more intricate clocks had gongs that would sound every passing hour. Water clocks or Clepsydra, also used in the East and in Greece in ancient times were of two types, inflow and outflow. Both use a marked container into which water flows or is drained to tell the passage of time. Aren’t you glad all you have to do now is look at a pretty dial to know the time instantly?

2. Getting watches placed on the wrist of a celebrity in a movie is no fickle deal. There is a lot of thought involved and can happen possibly in three ways. Sometimes, the actor loves a particular watch and insists on it being used in the film. Other times, the props master feels that a watch finds a good fit in a particular scene and adds it to the costume for effect. Or the watch brand is one of the sponsors of the film and therefore gets their watch placed prominently in one or many scenes. All this adds to the glamour factor of a film for watch buffs! But just think, some brands tweak their old watches or produce newly designed ones for a particular film or role, just to ensure that it fits all the time period/design criteria. You should now look closer at the time piece on your favourite actor’s wrist in his/her next movie. If you spot some that haven’t already been discovered and identified, there are many websites citing “the unknowns” as watches in movies that need identification. You could help them out!

3. What would you do without an alarm to wake you up every morning? Before the advent of alarms on our mobile phones, we used alarm clocks of various kinds. The cutest ones being the old-school styles with two bells that jangle happily in the morning. But did you know that the first user-settable alarm clocks were used as early as the 15{+t}{+h} century? Though the style we recognise most today was invented by Levi Hutchins of New Hampshire. The only problem was that it would only ring at 4 A.M in the 18{+t}{+h} century, despite the season! But the patent for an adjustable mechanical alarm clock was applied for by French inventor Antoine Redier only in the 19{+t}{+h} century.

4. Are you one of those who loves the sound of a gong coming from a grandfather clock but never really knew why they were called grandfather clocks? Well, the correct terms for these antique beauties are actually floor clocks or longcase clocks. But according to popular belief and The Oxford English Dictionary, the term grandfather clock began to be used after the song titled “My Grandfather’s Clock” and written by Henry Clay Work in 1876 became famous. The song was a favourite in Britain, especially with children, though the lyrics were quite morbid and was about the story of a longcase clock owned by a man that did not stop ringing until his death, but sung from the standpoint of his grandson.