It is generally believed that time was invented by ancient Romans to enhance their productivity and advance their invasion of the French Riviera. The first Romans, much like Polynesians and teenage boys today, were unaware of time, they were dependent upon their wives and mothers to tell them when it was time for eating, working or sleeping. Divorced and unmarried men were severely handicapped. There were several reported deaths caused by starvation as the men did not know when to eat or sleep.
Productivity during this early period was at an all time low. The great Roman Emperor, Sidney Caesar and his consort Imogene Coco, commissioned the Chronos brothers, Houros, Yerius, Secondius and Murphy to develop a system to reference time so people would know when to eat, sleep and work, without depending on their wives. The original idea was to do away with wives all together, but this plan was quickly abandoned when it was pointed out that women were doing most of the work.
The time system as originally developed, included a year of 10 months totaling 304 days. January and February were not part of the original calendar as the Chronos brothers usually spent the Winter in Egypt, so did not feel it was necessary to have those months in the Roman calendar. It was not until the time of Julius Caesar that anyone noticed that there were about 60 days from the end of one year and the start of the next, when no work was performed, and the calendar was corrected by the addition of 2 months and the beginning of the year was moved to January 1st. Today most of the industrial world (Kansas and the United States Postal Service are conspicuous exceptions, as they still use the 10 month 304 day year) has adopted the Roman calendar as modified for religious and political reasons.
The shorter time periods such as the day, hour, minute and second were used by the working class and others who were not into long range planning
At first the days were only 12 hours in duration as the clocks were all solar powered and did not work at night. People who worked 2nd and 3rd shifts or at night in the 7-11 stores would only be able to tell time if they held a candle above their sundial. It was not until the 7th century that the Swiss developed a mechanical clock powered by a tiny bird on a miniature bicycle which was allowed a break every hour, when it opens a door in the front of the clock, poke its head out and announces the hour by saying CooCoo. This simple development effectively doubled productivity.
There is still much work to be done on the standardization of the calendar and of the hours. In most of the world there are separate time zones which manage to confuse people. Many of the more nefarious governments have instituted daylight savings time. This scheme is claimed to save an hour of daylight each day, I have yet to see any of this so called savings. what, I ask, has the government done with these extra hours of daylight? It is suspected that the extra hours are going to large political donors and friends of elected officials.
It is my considered opinion that the world would be well served to have consistent time, if it 10pm in London then it should be 10pm in Los Angeles. People should work, eat and sleep according to the clock, not according to the cycles of light and dark or the position of the Sun.
Those who are waiting for their wife to get dressed for a party may not agree, but there has been a universal adoption of the shorter time periods, such a seconds, minutes and hours. When your wife says, “Honey I’ll be down in 15 minutes”, and you wait so long you need to shave again, this is not a function of different lengths of time, but only confusion between hours and minutes.
No comments:
Post a Comment