Did you know that it wasn’t until the industrial revolution that human beings realised that it was essential to get up at a set time everyday and do so early in the morning? These and other fascinating anecdotes are studded throughout Jocelyn Timperley’s entertaining & informative piece. We learn from her that: “During Britain’s industrial revolution, new factories faced a need for strict timekeeping – including far more specific start times for workers.
A worker arriving even five minutes late could hold up an entire assembly line, losing their employers’ profit. They needed a means to wake up on time, especially in the darker winter months, and while early alarm clocks existed at this time, they were far too expensive for a typical worker.
Factories tried using whistles and bells to wake and summon workers, but they often proved unreliable. Instead, an entire profession dedicated to awakening people sprouted up: knocker uppers.
These human alarm clocks would work their way down streets and sometimes whole neighbourhoods knocking or tapping on windows, or shooting peas at them, says Arunima Datta, associate professor of history at the University of North Texas. “They would stand there until they got a response from their clients…”
Other than human knockers and the local roosters, the other popular and inexpensive way to wake people up at a set time was the local church bell: “Bells were another widespread signal for waking up, says Handley. In medieval and early modern Western and Central Europe especially, life was organised around the parish unit, she says, and people used church bells, rung by a bellringer every hour, to start and organise their day. “The person ringing the bell has an hourglass to keep their time.””
And, finally, in what appears to be a predecessor to the alarm clocks which we used in our formative years, candle clocks designed in China fulfilled much the same purpose: “Candle clocks, with markings for incremental measurements of the passing of time, go all the way back to Ancient China. These were sometimes cleverly devised so that a nail would fall out into a little metal tray approximately every hour, says Handley. “You could make your own candles, which a lot of people did for cost reasons, as another auditory signal of when you wanted to be woken up”.
Incense was also used to keep time in China, sometimes with metal balls hanging by threads which would fall into a tray below, acting as gongs. A 19th Century account by an American ethnologist even noted people in China placing incense sticks between their toes to wake themselves up.”
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