As is usual, I set my alarm this morning for seven, but didn’t actually wake up until 8, despite the alarm blasting the whole time. Usually I have to set two alarms to even have a chance of getting up at the time I need to. That makes me wonder, how did people know when to wake up before alarm clocks? I know there were town criers sometimes, but for a heavy sleeper like me there’s now way that would wake me up. The sun might help sometimes but what if you had to get up before dawn? Or if you had to get up earlier than usual in order to have time to ride into town for your weekly supply of goods? I would love it if someone would be able to answer this question that has been bugging me for awhile. Thanks!
I can tell you from recent experience that babies do a pretty good job. No matter when she goes to bed, she wakes up at 6:30 +/- 10 minutes every day. I have no idea how she does it, but she does. I quit setting my alarm clock a while back.
Back in the day, there were a lot more babies around, and they were not that far away. No baby monitors needed in small houses.
Roosters? 
Necessity, most likely. You can condition yourself to wake up at pretty much the same hour every day. Alarm clocks date back to the 15th century, but it’s unlikely that the working class had them. I’m pretty certain that obsession with time was not an issue until much more recently. In an agrarian society, failure to rise very early would have meant your cows didn’t get milked and the other farm work didn’t get done as it should. If the crop fails and your cows are sick, you don’t eat, which is a powerful motivator to get your ass out of bed.
On a farm, the animals would give you plenty of notice that it’s time to wake. The rooster would crow at dawn, while the cows would moo when they need to be milked. Other animals would start to become active at dawn.
You also can train yourself to wake at about the same time each day.
Previous thread, with beowulff playing Zeldar’s role.
I have not used an alarm clock in years except for special occasions when I had to get up hours earlier. Even then I never actually needed them because my internal clock did that job. I admit that I cheat by having a viewable clock while sleeping, but no set alarm.
Far out!
If I’m worried about waking up on time, I’ll chug two tall glasses of water when I go to bed. I wake up on time.
Right after bizarre dreams where you keep looking for a toilet and can’t find one…
And of course they didn’t have to punch a time clock at 8AM, either, so “being on time” wasn’t an issue they had to deal with like we do. In many places, the Church bells would signal important house of the day, too. But as others said, you went to bed early, and got up with the sun or when the animals woke you up.
roosters, kids, sunlight coming in unshaded windows.
Better than the dream in which you do find one.
So true!
Supporting Zeldar: There’s a series of short prayers that devout Jews still say first thing in the morning, thanking God for various morning things. One of them goes something like: “Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has given the rooster the ability to know when it’s morning.” Sounds to me like, “Thank God for my alarm clock.”
My Grand-dad called that a “Tartar alarm clock” and claimed to be able to pick any waking time from 4am on by how much water he drank before going to sleep. Considering how rarely he was late for anything he may have had something there.
According to Gramma (on the other side of the family) it was the mantel clock – which wasn’t an alarm clock. When my wife and I found it in the attic and had it repaired we had to have the bell muffled. Even a floor and several closed doors away when that sucker chimed 5 times or more it would wake us up. When talking it over with Gramma we learned it worked the same basically on her. 5am she was up and starting the process of getting her husband ready for the mill and by 6 starting on the kids.
Sometimes there would be a designated person who would go around and knock on peoples door. Church bells and factory whistles would wake people up too. During WWII there was actually a crisis because they stopped making alarm clocks. Enough people started being late that the government had to tell the clock companies to start producing them again before the war was over, and the government controlled the prices so no one would be gouged. That’s about all the alarm clock trivia I know.
I have the alarm on my phone set to go off every 5 minutes for an hour M-F. I usually wake up on the first one, but sometimes don’t wake until 2-3 alarms go off. I like the arrangement, it’s ok if I miss the alarm, there are 19 more on the way. If I want to snooze, I have to click 20 buttons to turn the alarm off, which takes about 15 seconds of eye open time, which is enough to wake me up anyway.
By going to bed in time to get enough sleep and waking up naturally, probably.
I used to ride the snooze button, but that was because I only gave in and went to bed when I was exhausted. Now our routine puts bedtime at 10:00, and the only use I get out of my alarm clock is looking at it when I wake up to see if it isn’t still to early to get out of bed.
Not even the very wealthy would have had them. The only 15th century clocks that could conceivably be called alarm clocks were huge great, room sized things, sometimes be found in a local church tower, that could be set to chime loudly at set hours (or, probably more commonly, every hour). Individuals didn’t own them, and I doubt if many people (apart from monks, who had to pray at set hours) used them to wake themselves up.
Yeah, people got up early in pre-industrial agrarian societies, but the precise hour did not matter much. It was not that hard to do because you went to bed early because (even if you were not exhausted by work) there was little in the way of artificial light available after sunset. You can’t really do all that much by candle light.
Precise timekeeping did not become a significant issue until the industrial revolution, when people had to be on time to start work at the factory, or to catch the train before it left. And, of course, the industrial revolution soon solved the problem it had created by making possible the mass production of small and cheap alarm clocks.
Most people have an internal alarm clock, meaning their body is used to waking at certain times if they find a routine. That said, people probably just went to bed early enough not to oversleep and be late at work or wherever. I never use alarm clocks, they annoy me. I wake about the exact same time everyday so I don’t need it.