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1300 - 1900
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The earliest method of telling the time was the sundial. When the sundial was invented is unknown but they were used in Ancient Egypt and Ancient Iraq and are also mentioned in the Old Testament. Ancient civilizations such as the Greeks and the Romans also used sundials. Over time sundials gradually became more accurate and they remained a common way of telling the time until the early 19th century.
1300
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The first mechanical clock is said to have been made by I-Hsing, a monk and mathematician, but others will argue that is was actually made by Galileo, an Italian scientist, so the correct 'who' and the precise 'when' other than the 1300s is unknown. In 1309 a clock was recorded in a church in Italy, but nothing says that it was the first one.
1510
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Early clocks were typically in churches and were very heavy because they operated on weights. However, about 1450 the coiled spring was invented and made it possible for portable clocks. The first watches were made in 1510. With that, clocks were moved into homes in the 16th century but could only be afforded by rich people.
1657
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Early clocks were not very accurate but in 1657 Christiaan Huygens introduced the pendulum (a weight suspended from a pivot, typically a sphere, so it can swing freely.) Clocks became far more accurate, though they were still set by sundials.
1760
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In the late 17th clocks with long cases were made. In 1876 a man named Henry Clay Work wrote a song called My Grandfathers Clock and in the early 20th century they became known as Grandfather clocks.
1775
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1787
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A mechanical alarm clock was created by an American named Levi Hutchins in 1787. He made the device for himself and it only rang at 4 a.m., in order to wake him for his job. The French inventor Antoine Redier was the first to patent an adjustable mechanical alarm clock, in 1847, 60 years later.
1840
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december 29 1999
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An Institute in Colorado created a clock (NIST-F1) so accurate it won’t lose/gain a second in 20 million years. This is the clock used for internet time.
2010
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Every GPS satellite has multiple atomic clocks and the time is included in the signal it sends out. With the help of these signals, a GPS receiver can determine the current time within 100 billionths of a second. These signals are for example used to synchronize base stations in cell phone networks.