The clock was invented in the Stone Age when a troglodyte stuck a stick into the ground outside the cave and noticed the shadow. But when the sun doesn’t shine… you need a water clock. So, water clocks were the next invention in timepieces. In ancient Greece, water clocks called ‘clepsydra’ were used, famously to stop lawyers from arguing for too long.
Water clocks and sundials are analogue clocks. But 700 years ago, the human race got around to digital clocks, clocks based around an oscillator, a pendulum, whose oscillations were counted up on gearwheels, and hands pointing at a circle of numbers. Curiously, these used the 5000BCE sexagesimal system with 60 seconds per minute, 60 minutes per hour, that we still use.
But you don’t have to use pendulums – or quartz crystal oscillators. You can make a digital water clock using a siphon as the oscillator, and further siphons for the counter: a veritable Symphony of Siphons!
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