Timepieces

From shadow on sand to atomic clocks — humanity's chase of ever-more-precise time.

9 posts· 3500 BCE – 1583

• Galileo's pendulum, or the clock he never lived to build 1583
• Peter Henlein's pomander, or the clock that fit in a hand 1510
• The Salisbury clock, or the machine that forgot to have a face 1386
• The mechanical escapement, or when clocks learned to tick 1283
• Su Song's clock tower, or the machine that told the whole sky 1088
• The incense clock, or how China measured the night in smoke 520 CE
• Ctesibius's clepsydra, or the water clock that fixed itself 250 BCE
• The Egyptian clepsydra, or how priests told time without the sun 1500 BCE
• The shadow clock, or how Egypt turned sunlight into hours 3500 BCE