Like before the Internet/tv/radio etc how the hell did people organise anything or do anything on time? How did they synchronise their clocks?
In: Technology
Do you mean before or after clocks? The mechanical clock wasn’t invented until 1270 or so, and didn’t become common until the 17th century for public display and the 18th century for personal ownership by ordinary people. Before clocks the simple answer is time was less important. To the average person, they got up when the sun came up, worked when there was work to be done, ate when they were hungry (assuming they had food), and went to bed when they were tired. You can keep track of what day it is without a clock, so they knew when to go to Church. It simply wasn’t important to the average person whether it was 2pm or 3pm.
This laissez faire attitude towards what time it is quickly went away after trains were invented. Before trains, it might be 1 PM in Boston, 1:15 in New York, and 1:30 in Philly and it didn’t really matter. But once you started running trains between major cities, keeping a schedule became very important. So you can thank trains for aligning what time it was, at least in cities served by trains.
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