Which style of clocks came first?

Question

I was just wondering is the hand clock or flip clock older? Was it the hand clock and the flip clock was like going more towards digital? By flip clocks I mean the ones where it'll be say 8:00 and the 0 top half will flip and become a 1.

Answer 1

The first clocks were....

Sundials.

The "hand clock" dates back to the 15th century. they had ones that you wound up a spring to make it run. Wind up clocks were still in use into the early 1900's because they didn't have electricity yet. When electricity came along, then hand clocks were run with a motor to turn the hands.

The flip clock you speak of didn't come about until around the 1960's is when I saw my first one. This was before the first digital type clocks were invented.





g-day!

Answer 2

Hand clocks use wind-up or weighted pulley gear technology which has been around for hundreds of years; clocks with hands have been used in cuckoo clocks, grandfather clocks, and turret clocks like Big Ben or the clock in Independence Hall. I never heard of a flip clock in any historical buildings and don't think that they even existed until after electricity was commonly used.

Answer 3

Hand clocks with just the hour hand were known in the Middle Ages. "Flip" clocks were rare till the late 1950's.

Answer 4

the hand clock by far, the flip clocks made there depute in the US in the early 1970s, hands on clocks had been around since the 1200s, before that it was the old sundial (solar powered!).

Answer 5

The earliest means of measuring time was watching the Sun's position in the sky. Later came the sun dial, then the Ancient Greeks invented analog devices using a circular flow of water to measure time. It was wickedly ingenious.

Answer 6

i think it was called a sun dial