Clocks: The Technology of Time

Before anyone invented a clock, people still needed to track time — and they got surprisingly creative about it. The earliest timekeeping DEVICE was probably the SUNDIAL, which used the shadow of a pointed rod called a GNOMON (NOH-mun) to show the time of day. Sundials were used in ancient Egypt as far back as 1500 BCE. They worked brilliantly on sunny days, but there was one obvious FLAW: they were completely useless at night or on cloudy days. That challenge pushed engineers and inventors to keep experimenting, and that spirit of solving problems is exactly what drives all great technology.