BellClocks: A simple clock and timer
BellClocks is a simple clock as well as a timer. Presenting the current time in an elegant digital LCD style display, getting the time is only a click away.
It can also act as a world clock, removing any doubt or tricky sums when you’re trying to work out what time it is in another country.
But while the clock you are looking at is simple, and even the world time functions are nothing more than a click away, clocks and timekeeping have a sophisticated history. Even BellClocks’ simplicity is a front for a complex set of technology that exists just to bring you the time.
A brief history of clocks
For most of humankind’s existence, clocks simply didn’t exist because they were not necessary.
The earliest people’s lives were largely dictated by their environment, and it was the sun that determined their timetables, and for large parts of the population that lifestyle continued until recently. If, like most of the population until the Industrial Revolution, your life was tied to farming and agriculture, you didn’t need a clock. It was the rhythm of the day that determined your tasks.
The technology needed to make clocks and other time-keeping devices was also expensive and large. It meant that only the wealthiest people or organizations could afford them.
They were often as much a status symbol as they were about the time. For example, one of the world’s most famous clocks, the Prague Astronomical Clock, or Orloj, was built in the 15th century. One of the city’s most famous attractions, it is part of the Old City Hall and reflects the city’s wealth and prestige.
For those that needed to tell the time, clocks like the Orloj would be what they used. While many others would rely purely on signals, like church bells, to alert them to anything timed they needed to know about.
The beginnings of coordinated time
In some ways, our ancestors, despite the lack of technology and relative rarity of clocks, kept more accurate time than we do. The sun was the timekeeper, and time was set locally, with noon being when the sun was directly overhead.
It meant that the time in neighboring towns would be subtly different, but astronomically, both would be correct. Today though, your astronomical time might be different to your time zone.
However, the industrial revolution, and with it the creation of railroad networks, meant that ceased to be a viable option. Train travel was fast enough that accurate time-keeping mattered. Having clocks in different towns that were not coordinated didn’t just ruin timetables and frustrate travelers, it created real danger because trains could be sent on the wrong tracks at the wrong times.
The first country to adopt a standard time was Great Britain. Train companies started using a standard time for the entire country in 1847. Becoming known as ‘railway time’, it was so important that within a few years almost all the country’s public clocks used it.
Other countries took different approaches, in America, railroad companies used their own individual time until 1883. There were 50 different time standards in operation when the move to standardize into five time zones finally happened. Even then, despite some tragic accidents caused by timing issues, many opposed the move, especially smaller towns that felt big train companies were forcing their timekeeping onto town clock-faces.
Using time to travel the world
Just as train travel illustrated the need for a standard time, sea travel highlighted that a global solution was also needed. However, the links between ships and clocks stretched back even further.
The greatest challenge for early sailors was navigation. With visibility limited to the horizon, it was incredibly difficult to know where they were. The curvature of the earth is subtle, but it means that you can see surprisingly little. The average person, if stood in a perfectly flat area, could only see about three miles. Even if a lookout claimed a fifty-foot mast, they’d still only see around ten miles away. On the wide expanses of ocean, with no identifiable features, the intrepid explorer had no real way to know where they were.
Sailors were able to use the sun and stars to calculate how far north or south they were (their latitude). But when it came to calculating how far east or west they were (their longitude), they could only estimate, guessing how long they had been travelling. Traditional clocks were useless at sea because pendulums were disrupted by even the gentlest sway of the ocean.
It’s one of the reasons seafaring was so dangerous, and why many discoveries were subsequently lost; captains believed they’d found new lands, but never knew exactly where they were.
It was, again, Britain, that led the way on timekeeping, passing an act of Parliament. The Discovery of Longitude at Sea Act 1713 offered a prize of £20,000 (about £1.5 million or $1.9 million at today’s value). John Harrison, a carpenter from a poor background, may never have seen a clock outside the pages of a book, but claimed the prize in 1735 with his H-1 chronometer.
For the first time, ships could navigate with precision. Many suggest that Great Britain’s subsequent dominance of the seas and trade, and the empire that grew with it, was largely down to the invention of a humble carpenter.
Standardizing time globally
With technology — and the accuracy of timekeeping advancing — the first moves to standardize time around the world began. While most nations had moved to a standard time, there was no coordination between them. Looking at a clock in New York would not help you know exactly what time a clock-face in London, Berlin, or Tokyo displayed.
And while international trade routes shared some of the timekeeping problems that railroads had experienced, they were not as severe. The speed of ships and expanse of the seas meant ships departing different ports did not need to be closely coordinated.
But some of those ships were laying cables, making direct communication between nations separated by seas possible and reinforcing the need for a coordinated time system.
This finally happened in 1884, when the International Meridian Conference met in Washington DC and decided that the Greenwich Meridian, which passed through the Greenwich Observatory in London, was the best placed to be the Prime Meridian.
Although the name has changed, today’s universal time — Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC — is still measured from the meridian chosen at that conference. It ensures that every time zone is aligned with the time at the Prime Meridian. That person looking at a clock in New York at midday would know that (unless different daylight savings were in effect) in London it would be 5pm, in Berlin it would be 6pm, and in Tokyo, it would be 2am the next day.
Increasing the accuracy of clocks
By the start of the 20th century, clocks and watches were becoming more affordable and accurate. For most people, if they need to know the time they could, and they would be able to get an accurate time for their purposes.
However, timekeeping and clocks have become more and more accurate. And for some technologies, having a clock that’s a few seconds off is simply unacceptable.
During the twentieth century, clocks became incredibly accurate. One of the major breakthroughs was the use of quartz. Vibrating when a current was passed through, the vibrations could be used to measure time more accurately. Even basic quartz clocks and wristwatches are accurate to within 15 seconds a month, the best models only lose or gain a few seconds a year.
But even that wasn’t enough for some. In the post-nuclear age, the atom was also harnessed for its timekeeping properties. It has made timekeeping incredibly precise. The USA’s NIST-F2 atomic clock has provided the standard time for the USA since 2014, and is estimated to be accurate to within one second over 300 million years.
It might be difficult to imagine why anything needs to be that accurate, you wouldn’t care if someone was one second late for a meeting in year 300000000, would you? However, clocks form a foundation for some essential technology.
Just as 18th century sailors used chronometers, today’s GPS relies on accurate time. A single nanosecond — one billionth of a second — equates to an error of about a foot with a GPS, so imagine the distance if they were out by a second. Keeping that appointment in the year 300000000 might be more about making sure you’re in the right place, rather than worrying about being a second late.
And how all this helps BellClocks tell you the time
Although you might not think you need that accuracy in your watch or clock, digital or analog, you get it by default with BellClocks.
Our clock works by using your system clock, but that will almost certainly be using the Network Time Protocol (NTP). NTP uses a hierarchy of computers to share the time from the world’s most accurate clocks. There are thousands of computers around the world operating as NTP servers, some operated by major companies like Microsoft or Apple, and many, many more operated by ordinary volunteers like you.
Using an algorithm to compensate for network latency means that your computer will be accurate to UTC within a few milliseconds. It may not be quite accurate enough to run a network of GPS satellites, but BellClocks time will certainly be accurate enough for anything else you need to use it for.