Clock it is Friend of Time

I detest getting up early in the morning. Not an uncommon complaint. I recall when my three sons were little, waking them with music. Now, you might be dream up, “How sweet. He gently woke his children with the soothing sounds of music.”

You'd be wrong. I had a vinyl note of Snoopy and the Red Baron that featured the sounds of World War I planes in combat! At full volume, it never failed to bring them out of their beds in release (pardon the pun) time. I quit using this method when they hit their teens and loud music had no effect upon them.

We didn't have alarm clocks in Army root training. We woke up at the crack of dawn out of pure survival instinct. My short drill instructor grabbed the verge of my bunk bed (I was on top) to pull himself up and lay a good clout on me with his wooden swagger stick when I didn't respond to his demands to wake up! After that happened twice, I became an inappropriate riser.

Having to wake up at a certain time has always been a challenge. The Greek philosopher Plato (428-348) had a mammoth water clock alarm that was said to sound like an organ. (Athenaeus 4.174c)

The goal of getting up at a prescribed experience encompasses cultures throughout recorded history.

The Roman senator Cassiodorus (c. 485-585) had a water clock. In China, a awe-inspiring clock was made by the Buddhist monk and inventor Yi Xing (683-727). An Arab engineer named al-Kaysarani made a striking clock in Damascus, Syria in 1154.

Historians give French inventor Antoine