How did hourglass happen? How did they even get the right amount/size of each sand particle/other physical aspects to be aligned with the time?
In: Physics
In ancient times water clocks were used. You would have a bowl that floated in water. Then punch a small hole in the bowl so that water would slowly leak in. It would take time for the bowl to fill up with water and sink. You would time things by the bowl. For instance you might pay for a massage that would last one bowl.
When these were made, there was no precised short units of time and no way of measuring them. You did not make a bowl that lasted 5 minutes because there was no such thing as 5 minutes.
You made a bowl that lasted a time that seemed right. Or you would measure how long a bowl took to fill compared to another bowl and slowly increase the size of the hole until they took the same amount of time.
Hourglasses were the same. The amount of time they measured was the amount of time they measured. There was no precise minute to make an hourglass that time a minute.
When mechanical clocks were invented and time got rigidly defined with precise hours, minutes, and seconds (in Roman times, the length of an hour varied by time of day and year), then hourglasses were calibrated to a particular time by adjusting the amount of sand inside them.
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