I’ve been thinking about this during the last couple of days, and I feel like there must be an obvious answer. There have always been jobs that require one to be at a certain place at a certain time, laborer positions, shop assistants, etc. Wikipedia says that the first patented mechanical alarm clock came about in 1847. However, this wouldn’t immediately be accessible to everyone.
All I can think of is that there was some long-obsolete profession of “professional wakers”, maybe people who intentionally put themselves on a nocturnal schedule and charge a fee for going about the city and waking people up at a certain time? Was there a town crier who walked the streets at 6am and rang a bell? Did church bells wake people?
Being one rather dependent on an alarm clock myself (I’ve never been able to “naturally” wake up at the same time every day), I’m rather curious. Anyone know how this used to work?
Farmers might be waked by roosters or by cows lowing to be milked (cows are EXTREMELY loud).
Laborer might have factory whistles within hearing – either working close by the factory in worker’s housing or living in “Company towns” where they were supervised (Hershey, PA, Lowell, MA, etc).
I don’t know the answer, but I’ll just point out that the Wikipedia link says that the first alarm clock was invented in 1787, which is smack in the middle of the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and the first patent was, as you say, from 1847, which is pretty much the time of the later stages of the Industrial Revolution, what some call the “Second” Industrial Revolution. I guess that before that, getting up and going to work on time wasn’t an issue for a lot of people in the same way as today. I dunno.
People, naturally sleeping when it gets dark, will naturally wake up when the sun comes up.
In 1700, people didn’t stay up until 1am watching David Letterman. They went to bed around 8pm. I’m sure that if we all went to bed at 8pm, after a day of hard work, we could wake up very refreshed at 6am without prodding.
Also, before the invention of clocks, people had a different concept of time. Nowadays, if you’re not where you’re supposed to be after five minutes, you’re “late”. But I’m sure there was much more leeway back in the day.
Preface: I dislike alarm clocks. They alarm me too much - I don’t appreciate my heart racing at that hour.
One technique I use if I need to be up significantly earlier than my set point is to drink a glass of water before bed. Bladder pressure will rouse me 2 hours earlier.
If it’s under an hour I just tell myself right before bed “You have to be up at 5:30.” It works for me. I also never see Letterman. I’m in bed 9:30 - 10:00.
For most people, if you keep a regular sleep-wake schedule, your circadian rhythm is enough to wake you up at about the same time (+/- ~15 minutes) every day.
Hi. New guy here. Both(older)sides of my family always woke up at @ 05:00 AM. They lived on farms and had to get up for chores and whatnot. I think it just became habit. A habit I wish I could shed. I don’t need an alarm clock. It is a true curse.
Me, too. I hate alarm clocks and never use them. Fortunately, I’m a very light sleeper, and rarely sleep very long without waking up. I also have this weird ability to wake up and guess the time within 5 or 10 minutes.
The other thing to keep in mind, as **monstro **noted, it’s only recently in history that “being on time” was an issue. In small villages, a person could rely on church bells to be rung at key times during the day.
Is this true? Not the Letterman part…that I can believe. But is it true that people 300+ years ago used to go to bed at 8 pm? I’m not attempting to doubt your knowlesge, jtgain, but that just sounds strikingly early to my 21st century sensibilities.
Think about it. The only artificial illumination was candles, oil lamps and a fireplace. There were no streetlights, so when it got dark, it got REALLY dark. You couldn’t see well enough to do anything, so why not go to bed?
But that would vary by season – a lot. Boston is Northern by U.S. standards but Southern in reference to Canada and a large part of Europe. I gets dark here well past 9 pm in June and about 4 pm in December. That is a huge change and many places are more extreme.
People didn’t go to bed at 5 or 6 pm during certain times of the year and 10 or 11 pm at other times did they? That makes no sense. All Scandinavians would have to be conveniently bipolar according to the calendar to have any chance at all according to such a system.
The explanations given sound OK on the surface but they don’t stand up at all against simple facts and common sense. It is a good question.
My wag would be in areas where winter took too many daylight the night was illuminated by a fireplace inside, which allowed the people to stay up a bit past sundown