The Alarm Clock
Getting out of bed on time, from raucous roosters to cheerful apps
We look at some of the crazy creations that broke our slumber.
Say what you will about the deprivations of early humanity, but one of the distinct benefits was that time truly was… irrelevant. There was no need to know what the time was and no obligation to get up to do much other than experience the day and dodge another sabre-toothed tiger.
Of course, if early humans did want to wake up early, the simplest method was just to drink lots of water before bed and let the call of nature wield its bodily chime. Or, simply sleep where natural sunlight would wake you with its brightness. (Out of the cave, man!)
As humans became more sophisticated, the need for an early wakeup call became more important. Ancient Greek philosopher Plato was renowned for his legendary dawn lectures in the 4th century BCE, when water clocks – with markings to show how water flow corresponded to time passing – were the time keepers de
jour. Plato’s water clock had the added feature of a chime set to go off once in the early evening and once at dawn. Handy for Plato, although how his lecture attendees managed to get there on time is anyone’s guess.
Another of the world’s earliest recorded alarm clocks dates to the year
725 CE, courtesy of mathematician, engineer, Buddhist monk, astronomer (and chronic overachiever!) Yi Xing. Tasked with improving calendars in China, he built on centuries of Chinese innovation to create an astronomical clock, snappily titled ‘Water-Driven Spherical Bird’s-EyeView Map of the Heaven’.
Measuring not only time but the distance of planets and stars, a water wheel turned gears in the clock, with puppet shows and gongs set to emerge at various times. Impressive work there, Yi Xing, if slightly superfluous to the needs of most at the time.
For many more centuries, people continued to rely on daylight, birdsong and our cock-a-doodle-doo-ing friend the rooster to wake.
The Middle Ages saw the invention of mechanical clocks, originally driven by weights. These massive objects, found only in churches and town belfries, soon began sounding bells at specific times. In fact, 2021 marks the 700th anniversary of perhaps the first such musical clock. Installed in a monastery near Rouen, France, in 1321, it was probably developed by some tech-savvy monks as a handy wake-up call for pre-dawn prayer-singing, without one of them having to pull an all-nighter.
The idea was expanded on by other Europeans, who created complex displays within chiming clocks in town squares, such as the 16th-century Strasbourg clock, which included a famous cockerel whose cries echoed through the cathedral.
The next step was to make these clocks smaller so they could be used individually. It’s thought personal mechanical alarm clocks originated in Germany in the 15th century, but their inventors are unknown. The first name associated with the mechanical alarm clock invention is Levi Hutchins, an American who invented a personal alarm device in 1787 to
RISE AND SHINE A timeline of what woke us up
wake him up at 4am every morning. No special reason, he just really liked to wake up early.
Hutchins never patented his invention (probably too tired from those pre-dawn starts) and it took another half a century for Frenchman Antoine Redier to patent the first adjustable alarm clock, in 1847. It allowed the user to set a time to wake up by placing a pin in the hour hole of the time you needed to be up. Nice and easy, if only accurate to the closest hour.
American Seth E. Thomas got in on the action, patenting his own version via the Seth E. Thomas Clock Company. Although Thomas died in 1859, in 1876 the company bearing his name brought out the first practical, mass-produced, mechanical, hand-wound alarm-clock that could be set to any time. By the late 1800s, the ‘classic’ alarm clock was being manufactured – you know, the one with twin bells, two keys, two feet, two hands and that clanging, nerve-jangling noise that is perhaps the most jarringly, unpleasant way to wake up.
Not everyone felt the need for a mechanical solution, though. Since the Industrial Revolution began, people had been finding other novel ways to make sure they got to work on time. Some factories would blow a large whistle. Another popular method in Britain and Ireland involved hiring a ‘knocker-upper’. Using everything from a truncheon to a pea shooter, the knocker-upper would bang on doors and windows to wake those inside. By the 1920s however, as alarm clocks grew in popularity, knocker-uppers were forced to pack away their pea-shooters and beat a quiet retreat.
Throughout the 1900s, alarm clock companies continued to innovate. Sadly, the hero who invented the combination of the clock-radio appears to have been lost to history, but it was believed to be sometime from the late 1920s to the late 1940s.
The forward progress of the alarm clock was then thwarted by WWII, with clock-companies in Britain and
America ceasing production from 1942-1945 as they turned their hands to producing aeroplane parts and other important wartime components.
As the war dragged on and alarm clocks broke or were destroyed in bomb-raids, the government realised alarm clocks were essential to the smooth running of industry, allowing some factories to recommence selling their products as early as 1944. By the end of the war, alarm clocks were a must-have item.
In the ‘Long Boom’ of the 1950s, alarm clocks featured new technologies and materials. Goodbye metal, hello plastic! Seeya, springwound mechanical clocks, hello electronic digital clocks! And enter stage left, snooze button! General ElectricTelechron first marketed the snooze alarm in 1956. (We now know that hitting snooze just disrupts our sleep and makes us feel worse, but we were young and innocent then.)
Like all good inventions, there was always someone striving to add a little extra something, which saw the introduction of everything from flying alarm-clocks, to exploding alarmclocks, alarm-clocks that play air-raid sirens, and Ticky, Tocky and Clocky, wandering alarm-clocks that would literally roll off the end of your bedside table and roll around the floor, beeping incessantly, forcing you to get up and chase them to turn off the alarm. And who could forget the breakfast-making alarm clocks seen on The Goodies?
Still struggling to get out of bed? How about the Tugaslugabed, an alarm clock that would wake you by pulling your toe. All you had to do was place a loop around your big toe before hitting the sack, and at the designated time, the clock, which was bolted to the floor, would yank on the loop to wake the soundest of sleepers (and probably dislocating a few digits in the process).
These days the original alarm clock is endangered, since alarm apps can now be found everywhere from your mobile-phone to your laptop computer. With smart everything allowing us to program our favourite song or sound to go off when we want it to, we can be lulled from the land of nod by myriad means. But for some, nothing quite competes with the slumber-obliterating sonorousness of the traditional, spring-driven mechanical alarm clock that continues to grace the bedside tables of millions around the world.