did they have a way of keeping track of time in the 1500s?

Answer 1

Absoloutely, yes.

Time keeping started almost as soon as man/woman discovered the stars (including our sun) and day/night. (ref 1)

It was in the 16th century that the portable clock was invented (the watch), which was usually worn around the neck. (ref.2)

--a great time to discover time.

Answer 2

1

Answer 3

http://physics.nist.gov/GenInt/Time/revol.html

TIME AND CLOCKS IN THE 1500s:
One advance was the invention of spring-powered clocks between 1500 and 1510 by Peter Henlein of Nuremberg. Replacing the heavy drive weights permitted smaller (and portable) clocks and watches. Although they ran slower as the mainspring unwound, they were popular among wealthy individuals due to their small size and the fact that they could be put on a shelf or table instead of hanging on the wall or being housed in tall cases. These advances in design were precursors to truly accurate timekeeping.

Accurate Mechanical Clocks
In 1656, Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch scientist, made the first pendulum clock, regulated by a mechanism with a "natural" period of oscillation. (Galileo Galilei is credited with inventing the pendulum-clock concept, and he studied the motion of the pendulum as early as 1582. He even sketched out a design for a pendulum clock, but he never actually constructed one before his death in 1642.) Huygens' early pendulum clock had an error of less than 1 minute a day, the first time such accuracy had been achieved. His later refinements reduced his clock's error to less than 10 seconds a day.
Around 1675, Huygens developed the balance wheel and spring assembly, still found in some of today's wristwatches. This improvement allowed portable 17th century watches to keep time to 10 minutes a day. And in London in 1671, William Clement began building clocks with the new "anchor" or "recoil" escapement, a substantial improvement over the verge because it interferes less with the motion of the pendulum.

In 1721, George Graham improved the pendulum clock's accuracy to 1 second per day by compensating for changes in the pendulum's length due to temperature variations. John Harrison, a carpenter and self-taught clock-maker, refined Graham's temperature compensation techniques and developed new methods for reducing friction. By 1761, he had built a marine chronometer with a spring and balance wheel escapement that won the British government's 1714 prize (worth more than $10,000,000 in today's currency) for a means of determining longitude to within one-half degree after a voyage to the West Indies. It kept time on board a rolling ship to about one-fifth of a second a day, nearly as well as a pendulum clock could do on land, and 10 times better than required to win the prize.

Answer 4

They had clocks in the 1500s.

Answer 5

They had sundials of course and water clocks and candle clocks which could be used indoors, they would donate the passage of time not necessarily the hours.
The minute hand wasn't invented until 1577.

Answer 6

Well, even before then, they had ways of tracking shadows off of stones, and then using sundials. But I am definitely sure they had clocks back then.

Answer 7

Many. The position of the sun, the moon and the stars, sundial, hourglass, water clock, simple tower clocks, hourly and quarter church and town bells and chimes, graduated candles, ...

Answer 8

Yes, they had clocks back then! The minute hand was invented in 1577

Answer 9

Yes they had ways of telling the time.

Answer 10

Sun dials and shadow searching wasnt it?

They made a damned sight better job of it than some devices these days... and it was FREE