Young explorers: a brief history of time telling

every way you look these days something is telling the time however it wasn't always this way here at the British Museum there are some amazing examples of how people used to measure the time but our oldest I'm telling devices are too big and far away to keep here they're called the Sun the moon and the stars you see the stars the moon in the Sun all moving regular patterns across the sky people thousands of years ago use these rules to chart the passing of time for example if you put a stick in the ground the shadow it creates lose position as the Sun crosses the sky you can therefore work out the tides and where the shadow falls sundial used this principle to tell the time some of the biggest and oldest can be found in Rome huge pillars that create gigantic shadows were used by the Romans as over time people develop portable Sundar's that you could hold in your hand like these here let's give one a go so the first thing we need to do is to set our sundial for our location right we just move the compass until it points towards north and then you should be able to read the shadow yep yeah that's four o'clock five o'clock six o'clock some hook it's resting on Ed clocks would that be 8:00 in the morning exactly yeah very good so I now know how to use a sundial very very handy thank you very much Louise no problem about 600 years ago people started to tell the time in different ways without using the Sun inventors starts to make mechanical clocks like this one here it measures movement power by weight to tell time these big clocks were often kept in towers or churches and town centres a bit like Big Ben they're very handy for telling people when it's time to work to church or to Parliament this crazy clock uses the movement of a ball to measure time every time the ball gets to the end 30 seconds has passed it travels two and a half thousand miles a year this is like walking from London all the way to Egypt how do you set your watch do you look at the time in the news the internet or perhaps you just peer over and of your friends watch where it's play to think only about 300 years ago if your clock slowed down or any of these clocks behind me you'd still need a sundial to reset it you see the first mechanical clocks weren't very reliable especially when you moved them around so for people that traveled for their work there was a growing demand for a portable clock this clock here a chronometer would have gone all around the world and helped many great explorers navigate the Seas a lightly other clocks we've already looked at it was able to keep precise time on rough stormy oceans which is important if you're a sailor because you needed to be able to tell the time to work out where you were and to prevent you from crashing into rocks so clocks like this we're a big deal as they help both Navy and merchants and saved thousands of people's lives as people's lives got busier they travel around more and industry developed the need for more accurate time turning devices got greater and greater so clever inventors started to use science and electricity to come up with super accurate clocks like this atomic clock which uses complex physics to stay in time this one is so accurate that we'll lose more than one second during the whole lifetime of the universe clocks like this have made it possible to satellites in space and for us to use our mobile phones this clock here may look rather simple to you but it's actually rather sophisticated it's time except by radio waves sent from one of these atomic clocks but there's something else fascinating about this clock and every other clock for you today that breaks time down into 60 minutes and 60 seconds why 60 well it comes from Babylonian mathematicians several thousand years ago that used to count with sixty units somehow this ancient form of mathematics word its way down into the time telling devices we use today so anytime you look your clock or your watch you're somehow connecting back to the ancient past so the time now is exactly six minutes to eight ladies and gentlemen the British Museum is now closed thank you for visiting goodbye oh I better get going hey Lynette hello excuse me hello so I think I've been logged in is anybody there hello just get my

Channel: The British Museum

Views: 60,417

Rating: 4.6179104 out of 5

Keywords: time, clocks, watches, history, sundials, British Museum, kids, children, Rome, Big Ben, horology

Id: ggvRga_JqXw

Length: 5min 56sec (356 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 22 2010