Ever wondered why the hands of the clock go ‘clockwise’ all the time? Why does the hour and the minute needle move from left to right (in what is called the ‘clockwise direction’) and not vice-versa? Why is everything in our routine and schedule supposed to follow a ‘time’? Right from school, to bed, to food to games to homework; everything is scheduled as per that clock on the wall or the watch on our hands.
Why and how did this timing come into practice.
Let’s have a look.
All of us are time conscious. We surround ourselves with alarm clocks, cuckoo clocks, wristwatches, grandfather clocks and look them up every now and then to check the time. And they all move the same way. Is there a logical reason for this or is it some whim of the inventor?
Nothing like that! There is a scientific explanation for this observation.
Throughout history, time has been measured by the motion of the Earth relative to the Sun. The earliest form of timekeeping dates back to 3500 B.C. when the shadow clock or the sundials were used. These were vertical sticks or obelisk’s (A tall, four-sided shaft of stone, usually tapered and monolithic, that rises to a point) that cast a shadow. An example of this clock can be seen at Jantar Mantar in Delhi.
People had already discovered that the earth is round and that it revolves around the Sun. So, they measured time based on the position of the sun – it was noon when the sun was highest in the sky.
Mechanical clocks were invented in the Northern Hemisphere in the 14th century and the inventors naturally wanted the device to follow the sun’s movement in the sky. In the Northern Hemisphere the Sun appears to move in the sky from the left to the right and so the hands of the clock were made to follow the Sun’s motion, moving from left to right or what is commonly known as clockwise. If you are in the Northern Hemisphere and face the South, you can watch the Sun rising on your left (the East) pass overhead and set in the West (at your right).
So, if the mechanical clock had been invented in the Southern Hemisphere, the hand on the dial of your watch would have been moving from right to left!
Do you know there are some Jewish and Arabic clocks that run anti-clockwise? This makes perfect sense as Arabic and Hebrew characters are written right to left!!