Telling time and studying words

Do you know why we say o’clock for the hour when telling time?  Why do we say, “it is 7 o’clock?”  I was asked this in an ESL class and I had no idea.  When I got home I had to look this up, and I learned a few things about time.

At one time people didn’t have clocks.  We told time by sundials or by guessing with shadows.  Some cultures built giant obelisks that worked as community sundials.  Other communities had a Noon Cannon, a cannon that fired every day at noon, allowing all that could hear it to be on the same time, at least for a while.  Churches rang bells telling the hour and the half hour.  I lived near a church that rang the hour and it drove me crazy.  The bells were loud, and rang for each hour.  I especially hated hearing it at 7 or 8 o’clock.  Luckily it stopped before dark and didn’t start until the workday started.  The Latin word for bell is clocca, and this is where the word for the clock came from.  Once clocks were in use, it was a habit to answer the question of what time is it in a way to make it clear the time came from a clock and not a sundial or guess or obelisk.  The answer was to say, “It is 7 of the clock.”  We have of course shortened that to 7 o’clock.

I learned that there were many ingenious ways to tell time before clocks besides the sundials and shadows.  Hour glasses and water clocks helped measure the passing of time, but they were really more like timers than actual clocks.  An incense clock was used with different smells designating the passing of time.

 I wonder what it was like when we didn’t have watches counting down the day.  We couldn’t stare at a watch or clock and see the minutes passing, causing panic and worry that we were not getting enough done. When meetings were arranged people managed to get together but with more patience, as the precise time was unknown.  Perhaps one person pointed to the sky and said, “We will meet tomorrow when the sun is here.”  Both individuals could make the meeting and no one was upset if the first person was later than the other.  It is good to know the time, to carry our watches or smart phones around and to be on time for work and meetings, but I feel like life was easier and passed slower when we were not so consumed with exactness. 

OF course there are times when we need complete exactness in time measurement.  When the United States was first covered with train tracks the railroad companies needed all communities to be together in their times.  Each town and community kept their own time measurement, so while it might be 12 noon in one town it might be 12:05 in the next town over, changing especially as the trains moved east or west.  Many tracks carried trains both ways, and keeping to a schedule would be important.  The USA converted to standard time with our time zones when railroad company presidents gathered to solve this problem.  They developed four standard time zones across the country on a day called the Day of Two Noons on November 18^th 1883. I find this very interesting that our time zones were not created by politicians or our leaders but by the railroad companies.  They were created by the business that needed them to be created, and the entire country began using them.

So, I am enjoying learning the history of time, and I hope this was interesting to you as well.  So many interesting things learned from one simple question. 

Have a great day!