Quartz clocks were invented in the late ’60s apparently. Before then, mechanical clocks and watches were constantly running down after a few days? And even say circa 1975, if you had a quartz watch, how would you get the most accurate time to set it?
Comments
Please do not comment directly to this post unless you are Gen X or older (born 1980 or before). See this post, the rules, and the sidebar for details. Thank you for your submission, QuarterMaestro.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
Who needed to know exactly what time it was back then?
Watches were close enough, as long as you remembered to wind them. Jewelers could make adjustments if they were running fast or slow. Or you call the “official” time number to reset your watch.
We all set our clocks by our day/date adjusted sundials.
In the 70s there was a number you could call that gave you the exact time.
They didn’t, and it didn’t matter at all.
For what purpose is time resolution greater than 15min useful in that time period is the question.
Timing circuits existed, but time keeping to that accuracy for public just wasn’t necessary or even a concept people bothered themselves with outside of academic pursuits.
In the USSR, every hour at xx:00:00, precise radio signals were transmitted on major radio channels, that would help people set their mechanical clocks.
In my case, it was “Radio Station WWV broadcasting from Fort Collins Colorado on internationally allocated frequencies of 2.5, 5, 10, and 15 Megahertz. At the tone, the time will be…”
It’s still going, but you better hurry. It’s a useful public service so it’ll probably be shut down in the next month or two.
Good mechanical watch is accurate. But mechanical table clock is very accurate, even for months.
Back then there was time signal in news that you could match your watch/clock and that got time from atomic clocks or before that electromechnical ones that were accurate down to 1s/year.
Call the number for the time and temperature.
You could call to find out the time.
At the sound of the tone. The time will be eleven fifty nine and ten seconds.
At the sound of the tone. The time will be eleven fifty nine and twenty second.
I remember doing this even into the 90s. Really, until I had the option to sink time by computer.
Wind up clocks were good for at least a month.
Never wore a watch, still don’t. I don’t really care what time it is.
Do you honestly think that in WWI, WWII, the Korean War, the 1950s/60s and 70s that people did not have accurate clocks? Are you crazy? Do you not think that we had electricity?
Who needs to know exactly what time it is now? You fixing to launch nukes?
I would call, “Time.”
The book “longitude” was really good and focused on the development of super accurate maritime clocks. John Harrison, i think, was the inventor and there’s a ton of political drama surrounding his works.
It was a contest with a prize and another contestant wound up on the judgment panel
Adventure Time ~ !!! With Finn and Jake
There was a phone number you could call to get the current time
The TV would show the time during some newscasts. Or you could call to get the time. Even now, I don’t think we generally need to know the exact time.
Everyone wore a watch. That said, there was no central chronometer, so if you had an important meeting, you showed up early to be sure you weren’t late.
You could listen to the radio to set your watch. A lot of radio networks would ‘beep’ at the top of the hour, and they seemed like they told you what time it was all day.
Also, there were a lot more public buildings with clocks in or on them. Think about the clock in Grand Central Station for example.
Time hadn’t been invented yet. Its existence is still questionable.
Just precise does the average person need to be with time keeping?
You would get out your sundial and compass, or your astrolabe and use the sun to get the correct time.
But seriously, You would call time and temperature on the phone.
“Does anybody really know what time it is
Does anybody care
(about time)
If so I can’t imagine why
(Oh no)
We’ve all got time enough to die”
Bulova watches.
At the sound of the tone, the time will be 1500
There was one time when my grandmother wanted to set her watch. She was sitting in a football television production studio where my uncle worked. Is that clock accurate? Cut the tension in the room, and everyone busted a gut laughing.
I have an old “jeweler’s clock”. The story that was passed down from my grandfather is as follows: The jeweler kept this clock wound meticulously and would check it’s time with the railroad. Townsfolk who needed to set their watches would stop by the jewelers to get the correct time. The clock was originally mounted in their shop but now has a stand so it looks like a grandfather’s clock.
My grandfather collected clocks and this is the last of his collection.
Businesses had digital displays or clocks outside and “clock towers” were a thing. Radio DJs gave out the time about every 10 minutes and you developed a habit of keeping your watch wound. But here’s the thing, in schools every classroom had a clock and they were always wrong.
Watches and clocks. There were clocks everywhere
My wrist sundial is always accurate
The town had a clock tower and your house had a pendulum clock and you set your watch to them.
Also clocks were found everywhere.
Also
Science
TV programs began promptly on the hour and half hour.
The railroads kept accurate time in the early 20th century and churches typically rang their bells on the hour
western union telegraph would send a signal to special clocks every hour, radio stations had them, my dad the jeweler and watchmaker had one and it would light up on the hour and stop or advance a few seconds, I still have the clock,
Have you heard of rewind clocks
After phones were a thing, starting around the early 1920’s, you called Time. “At the tone the time will be: 7:52 pm. At 40 seconds. Beep.”
Church bells would ring on the hour each bell ring so if it was 10 o’clock the church will ring 10 times if it was 8 o’clock it would ring eight times etc. It would ring on the half hour some of them rang on the quarter hour. I should say they chimed
Some people had grandfather clocks that did similarly. Someone had to remember to wind them up on a regular basis.
People would hear the church Bell and would set the clock or set the grandfather clock by the church bell.
Some people could tell the time by the way the sun sat on certain buildings for shading, etc.
If you look at old pictures coming from those times, instead of looking at the people look at the background, you’ll see a clock. You’ll see some people with a watch on their wrist or watch hanging around their neck.
The question is, what do you mean by “exact”?
We would generally know within a couple of minutes. We all wore watches. I still do.
Every now and then, like every few weeks, we’d notice our watch being off by a minute or two, and we’d reset it.
In Australia, we dialed 1194 to get the correct time.
The fire department rang the alarm at 8:50p.m. every night so we knew it was time to go home.
That’s how we set the clock.
Boing boing the current time is……
Call the time phone number NESTLES
standardized time came in with the railroads, and the way they did it was with telegraphs. prior to this, everyone just winged it. people set their clocks by the town clock, which had bells that could be heard for miles. but every town clock just winged it.
There was a number you could call from the phone to give you the “official” time.
Either that or check what the TV or radio said.
This question makes me sad.
Sundial.
There were also clocks on city halls, banks, major buildings. Church bells rang at the top and bottom half of the hour. Radio stations and tv stations announced or displayed the time.
Cuckoo – cuckoo – cuckoo – cuckoo. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckoo_clock
Sun dials homey
The radio had a time station there was a phone number you could call in to.
Prior to that the train times were thought to be correct because of scheduling.
Lots of ways many radio stations would broadcast time announcements at the top of the hour At the chime the time is:, many communities had time, temperature and weather phone numbers you could call, amazingly the one for my home town in Louisiana is still operational it is sponsored by a local bank, you can call it yourself if you want 337-463-3511. (I just checked it even though I had not called it in a few years, its still there) There were also church clocks that chimed at the top of the house, factory whistles that signaled time for shift changes, ….
p.s. the time and temperature number listed above started operations in the 1970’s, weather was added to it around 1990.
When my dad would come outside and yell “dinner”
I used to set my watch to the atomic clock on shortwave station wwv
You called time. At the tone, the time will be…
Radio and television broadcasts, public clocks/chimes….
WWV
Simple google search…Before atomic clocks, the most accurate timekeepers werependulum clocks, particularly those designed by William Hamilton Shortt and Frank Hope-Jones, known as the Shortt-Synchronome 1921. These clocks achieved an accuracy of about 1 second in 12 years. the first practical accurate atomic clock with caesium atoms being built at the National Physical Laboratory in the United Kingdom in 1955 by Louis Essen in collaboration with Jack Parry.
From about the 30s on everyone had at least one clock that plugged into an outlet. These clocks were controlled by synchronizing using the fact that our AC power is at 60 Hz (then called “cycles per second”). During heavy electricity demand sometimes the power company lets the frequency slip down a few Hz temporarily. This would make these clocks run a little slow but really not enough to be noticed. The power company had two clocks, one running on the 60Hz and another one that was controlled some other way. (I learned this during a visit to a power plant when I was around 10 years old. If they told me how the comparison clock stayed accurate I didn’t understand well enough to remember) .
Nobody in the 50s or 60s had to rely on a a mechanical clock entirely. They can be very accurate. I own a clock made around 1835 and It easily stays within about a minute of my phone’s time for two weeks.
Accurate time was needed for longitudinal navigation, this led to early computers! Grade six.
Shortwave radio station WWV in Fort Collins CO has been broadcasting time standards in various formats, frequencies and locations since 1937, eventually landing in Ft. Collins in 1966.
It’s been the time reference since its inception, used by radio and TV since then.
Before it became largely known as a status symbol, Rolex watches served an important function as makers of a reliable watch. Later, in the 1930’s Rolex introduced an “automatic” watch, which didn’t need to be wound, as normal movements with your hand would take care of winding it. (There were automatic watches before then, but Rolex improved on the design…) They were always expensive, but the functionality was more important, back in the days before quartz watches, than it is today.
Before the telegraph and railroads we synchronized our clocks locally by the position of the sun at noon. The importance of synchronized schedules to rail travel, however, lead to the establishment of what was known first as “Railway Time”, which started first in the UK in 1840 but then was quickly adopted by other countries. The telegraph in turn made it possible to synchronize timekeeping across long distances.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_time#North_America
Called the time number: https://www.nytimes.com/1977/09/23/archives/at-the-tone-the-correct-phone-number-for-time-will-be-9361616.html?unlocked_article_code=1.8E4.Tvms.XuHeeEmaHyGw&smid=url-share
What burns me today is that here we are in the 21st century, and when we change to or from DST I have to set 17 clocks around this house because they can’t do it themselves. Dumb clocks are in all my mundane appliances—toaster oven, microwave, coffee maker—and it would irritate the snot out of me to see them an hour off.
In or around 1900 electricity standards were set to 60 hz, which equivocates to one second a cycle, that’s how electric clocks kept time. Many clocks and watches were still using a winder at the time but if you had a clock plugged into a wall outlet you would only lose about a minute a year.
The Harrison H4 longitude watch, completed in 1759, was more accurate than the Casio digital watch I bought last year.
We listened to the radio or called the phone company. The radio was often giving us a ‘bing’ for hours. You could call time and a voice would say “At the tone, the time will be…..Eight…oh seven….beep!
Banks and lots of other businesses and public buildings had clocks on their signs or directly on the buildings. They were everywhere. You set your watch by them, or a small tabletop clock you could carry with you. Then you took it home and used it to set the rest of your clocks.
That practice was made somewhat (but not completely) obsolete by a universal time & temp phone number, 844-xxxx in the US. Then cell phones that always had the correct time replaced all of that.
There was a show I used to follow on CBC Radio many years ago. Came on right after the National Research Council Official Time Signal broadcast. A bunch of short countdown beeps, then a pause, then a long beep: “The beginning of the long dash indicates exactly 1 o’clock Eastern Standard Time.” CBC discontinued the signal in 2023.
How old do you think we are? Anyway, clocks were prevalent, and if your watch was too far off, you’d notice. Then as now, meeting times had some forgiveness built in. If you needed accuracy, you’d call POPCORN for the correct time.
The phonenumber is
202-762-1401
Time AND temperature. Way cool!
In Canada the national research council used to announce the time at 1 pm est. They would have several beeps followed by a pause. Then the beginning of the last beep would be precisely 1 pm. Nrc probably used an atomic clock.
We wore sundials on our wrists.
In 1975 if you forgot to wind your watch, you’d call the time and temperature number in your city or state. It would tell you the time down to the second, synchronized with the US Naval Observatory
WWV, Fort Collins. 5, 10, and 20MHz.
As the old joke went, in the middle of the night, you could open your window and start banging pots and pans. Then some neighbor would start screaming ”What the f*ck is wrong with you? Knock it off! It’s THREE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING!!” And then you could set your watch.
They could tell time with impressive precision when the sundial was invented around 1500 BC.
Before that, people could tell time (approximately) by observing and mapping the sun, moon, and stars as well as sun rise and sun sets.
In the mid to 20th century ( between 1901 and 2000), we used watches and clocks of all kinds.
The first watch that could be worn was invented in the early 16th century.
I hope this helps to answer your question.
I was actually thinking about something very similar to this topic today.
A guy asked what time it was. Technically, it was 1:17 PM. Because I had just looked at the time just before walking up to the group he asked, I replied, 1:30.
By this time, a minute had passed, and another guy said 1:20. Still, another guy looks at his phone, and when he does, I say, actually, it’s 1:18, and the third guy agrees with me.
When did it become so important for people to know the exact time?!?!?!
I remember when if the actual time was 20 minutes after the hour, the response to what time it would be, half passed the hour or a quarter till the hour, and so on and so forth.