- With the invention of the pendulum clock in 1656, Christiaan Huygens increased the best accuracy of clocks from 15 minutes deviation a day to around 15 seconds a day
- An Institute in Colorado created a clock so accurate it won’t lose/gain a second in 20 million years. This is the clock used for internet time.
- Big Ben is the name of the largest of the five bells which hang within the clock and not the name of the landmark clock.
- Pennies are used to adjust the time in London’s Big Ben clock tower. A single penny can change the pendulum’s centre of mass and alter the time by 0.4s per day.
- “o’clock” is a contraction of “stroke of the clock” and comes from 15th century references to medieval mechanical clocks.
- Clockwise and counterclockwise were originally sunwise and widdershins before clocks were common.
- France once tried simplifying time by using a decimal clock, in which there were only 10 hours in a day.
- Before alarm clocks, there was a profession called a knocker-upper who would go around and knock on your door until you woke up.
- A massive clock, hundreds of feet tall, is currently being constructed inside a mountain in East Texas. It’s designed to withstand the test of time and expected to tick uninterrupted for over 10,000 years.
- Due to changes in local gravity, a pendulum clock accurate at sea level will lose around 16 seconds per day if moved to an altitude of 4000 feet.
- A simple test involving asking a patient to draw the face of a clock is used as a screening tool for Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia.
- A mechanical alarm clock was created by an American named Levi Hutchins in 1787. He made the device for himself and it only rang at 4 a.m., in order to wake him for his job. The French inventor Antoine Redier was the first to patent an adjustable mechanical alarm clock, in 1847, 60 years later.
- The clock’s hands moving ‘clockwise’ was intended to imitate the way the shadow on a sundial in the Northern hemisphere moves during the day
http://www.kickassfacts.com Rob Shipton will be our speaker in October to tell us more about "The History of Clocks" - See "Guest Speakers" for further information.
