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Medieval town criers7/24/2023 ![]() The personalisation of time accelerated in the 19th century and gave rise to some wild modern alarm clocks. It was during this period, too, that compact spring mechanisms made smaller and smaller personal watches possible, carried or worn on the body from the 16th century. These house alarm clocks could wake the owner to work and pray. These often had pins that you could place around the clock face to set the bell ringing at a particular time. Gradually though, and certainly by the mid to late 15th century, you could find heavy iron wall clocks in private houses (made in places still famous for clockmaking, such as Switzerland). The ‘clocky’ alarm clock on wheels requires the waker to chase it. This is one reason technologies developed to count the hours of night - ancient and medieval water clocks with markings to show how water flow corresponded to time passing, and later (from around the 14th century) sand glasses in the familiar hourglass shape. But how would that person know when to cry the alarm? Sundials would obviously be useless. Having humans wake you up would usually mean someone has to stay up all night. Much later, in some parts of the industrial world, professional knocker-uppers might use a pea shooter or stick to tap on windows to wake you up for your shift. In the 15th century the town criers of the port of Sandwich on the south coast of England would call out the wind changes in the night so seafarers would know when favourable (or unfavourable) winds sprang up. Some early-morning calls were combined with weather forecasting systems. The melismatic chant - where a single syllable is sung over several musical notes - is both a wake up call to prayer (“Prayer is better than sleep”) and a prayer in itself. The Islamic call to prayer, the adhan, sung by men called muezzin, is one of the most sonically striking examples, with various versions marking out differences between traditions and regions. The human body has developed its own repertoire of alarms. Less melodic, though equally striking, is another possible bird noise associated with early rising - “sparrow’s fart” - first attested to in the 19th century.īirdsong has inspired humans for centuries: is it music? In Australia, we often evoke birdsong when we think about sleep and waking - from morning caroling magpies, to the versatile currawong or the midnight call of willie wagtails. Shutterstockīirdsong remains an important way of experiencing waking up. ![]() ‘Cocker-doodle-doo!’ Pre-modern night was divided into multiple segments, and the time before dawn was named for the cock’s crow. Scientists have since discovered roosters really do know what time that is. One early Latin word for the time before dawn was gallicinium, the time of the cock’s crow. A rich vocabulary emerged in ancient languages for the different parts of the night. In the pre-modern world, without electric lights and electric alarms, people paid more attention to the quality of light and the sounds around them. Some of the earliest words we have for time measurement show people’s particular interest in dividing up the different parts of the night. When did we first start using alarms, and what did they sound like? What’s changed about the sounds of time, and what hasn’t? Birdsong The job of waking us up when our body clocks are telling us to sleep is a big ask. These modern electronic alarms are just the latest in a long sequence of methods used to wake us from sleep: from the watchmen on ancient city walls waiting for the dawn to more recent clocks on wheels that have to be chased to stop ringing. The first beats of the day are often the dreaded beeps of the alarm clock or a digital symphony from a bedside phone. It’s the time of year when we Australians start returning to our normal rhythms.
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