A 2- mins, 4 mins, 6 mins modern Hour glass
From Watch Clock, Hour Glass Mechanical Watch, Quartz Watch… A Time measurement History.
Water clocks, also known as clepsydrae, along with the sundials, are possibly the oldest time-measuring instruments, with the only exceptions being the vertical gnomon and the day counting tally stick.
When they first existed is not known and perhaps unknowable. The bowl-shaped outflow is the simplest form of a water clock and is known to have existed in Babylon and in Egypt around the 16th century BC. Other regions of the world, including India and China, also have early evidence of water clocks, but the earliest dates are less certain. Some authors, told water clocks appearing as early as 4000 BC in these regions of the world.
The Greek and Roman civilizations are credited for initially advancing water clock design to include complex gearing, which was connected to fanciful automata and also resulted in improved accuracy. These advances were passed on through Byzantium and Islamic times, eventually making their way back to Europe. Independently, the Chinese developed their own advanced water clocks（水鐘）in 725 A.D., passing their ideas on to Korea and Japan.
From the 15th century onwards, Hour Glasses were being used in a range of applications at sea, in the church, in industry and in cookery.
During the voyage of Ferdinand Magellan around the globe, his vessels kept 18 hourglasses per ship. It was the job of a ship's page to turn the hourglasses and thus provide the times for the ship's log. Noon was the reference time for navigation, which did not depend on the glass, as the sun would be at its zenith. More than one hourglass was sometimes fixed in a frame, each with a different running time, for example 1 hour, 45 minutes, 30 minutes, and 15 minutes.
While some hourglasses actually did use sand as the granular mixture to measure time, many did not use sand at all. The material used in most bulbs was a combination of "powdered marble, tin/lead oxides, and pulverized, burnt eggshell". Over time, different textures of granule matter were tested to see which gave the most constant flow within the bulbs. It was later discovered that for the perfect flow to be achieved the ratio of granule bead to the width of the bulb neck needed to be 1/12 or more but not greater than 1/2 the neck of the bulb.
The word clock (from the Celtic words clocca and clogan, both meaning "bell"), which gradually supersedes "horologe", suggests that it was the sound of bells which also characterized the prototype mechanical clocks that appeared during the 13th century in Europe.
Watches evolved in the 17th century from spring powered clocks, which appeared in the 15th century. The first watches were strictly mechanical. As technology progressed, the mechanisms used to measure time have, in some cases, been replaced by use of quartz vibrations or electronic pulses.
Early wrist watch by Waltham, worn by soldiers in World War I (Deutsches Uhrenmuseum, Inv. 47-3352) A watch is a timepiece, typically worn either around the wrist or attached on a chain and carried in a pocket. Wristwatches are the most common type of watch used today.
In 1959 Seiko gave an order to Epson (a daughter company of Seiko and the actual brain behind the quartz revolution) to start developing a quartz wristwatch. The project was codenamed 59A and by the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics, Seiko had a working prototype of a portable quartz watch which took part in time measurements throughout the event.
The first prototypes of an electronic quartz wristwatch (not just portable quartz watches as the Seiko timekeeping devices at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964) were made by the CEH research laboratory in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. From 1965 through 1967 pioneering development work was done on a miniaturized 8192 Hz quartz oscillator, a thermo-compensation module and an in house-made, dedicated integrated circuit (unlike the hybrid circuits used in the later Seiko Astron wristwatch). As a result, the BETA 1 prototype set new timekeeping performance records at the International Chronometric Competition held at the Observatory of Neuchâtel in 1967.
Quartz Movement of the Seiko Astron, 1969 (Deutsches Uhrenmuseum, Inv. 2010-006) The first quartz watch to enter production was the Seiko 35 SQ Astron, which hit the shelves on December 25, 1969. As the technology had been developed by the Swiss, Seiko could not patent the whole movement of the quartz wristwatch, thus allowing other manufacturers to benefit from the technology.
All watches provide the time of day, giving at least the hour and minute, and usually the second. Most also provide the current date, and often the day of the week as well. However, many watches also provide a great deal of information beyond the basics of time and date. Some watches include alarms. Other elaborate and more expensive watches, both pocket and wrist models, also incorporate striking mechanisms or repeater functions, so that the wearer could learn the time by the sound emanating from the watch. This announcement or striking feature is an essential characteristic of true clocks and distinguishes such watches from ordinary timepieces. This feature is available on most digital watches.
1990 and onwards, a complicated watch has one or more functions beyond the basic function of displaying the time and the date; such a functionality is called a complication. Two popular complications are the chronograph complication, which is the ability of the watch movement to function as a stopwatch, and the moonphase complication, which is a display of the lunar phase. Other more expensive complications include Tourbillon, Perpetual calendar, Minute repeater, and Equation of time. A truly complicated watch has many of these complications at once (see Calibre 89 from Patek Philippe for instance). Some watches can both indicate the direction of Mecca and have alarms that can be set for all daily prayer requirements. Among watch enthusiasts, complicated watches are especially collectible. Some watches include a second 12-hour or 24-hour display for UTC or GMT. Many new complications with double tourbillon, quad tourbillion, spherical motion tourbillion, digital display driven by servo Quartz system. Differential Liquid pressure to generate power to push for a mechanical watch, and many other weird way to make up a “Watch”- but one thing is unchanged, a device to tell time Hour, Minute and Second.
In my opinion, a Watch with Hour hand, Minute hand, plus a Date is juts good enough, but it got to be made by rather precious metal, and has a perpetual Style that can last.
HK Snob
Kong Tsan Watch Fever
Sham Shui Po Snob
LED Fever
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