WEBVTT - Redefining the Second 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:07.160 Brought to you by Toyota Let's go places. Welcome to 0:00:07.360 --> 0:00:15.080 Forward Thinking. Hei there, and welcome to Horrid Thinking, the 0:00:15.200 --> 0:00:17.960 podcast that looks at the future and says underneath the 0:00:17.960 --> 0:00:19.880 big clock. At the corner of Fifth Avenue and twenty 0:00:19.880 --> 0:00:21.599 two Street, I stuta and waited for a girl I 0:00:21.680 --> 0:00:23.960 knew at the spot where we agreed to meet. It 0:00:24.040 --> 0:00:28.680 was four minutes of two. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm 0:00:28.760 --> 0:00:32.040 Lauren Folk. Bob and our third co host, Joe McCormick 0:00:32.240 --> 0:00:34.440 is not with us today in his place as an 0:00:34.440 --> 0:00:38.560 extraordinarily long quote. Yes, I I figured, since we would 0:00:38.640 --> 0:00:42.680 save time, would Joe not introducing himself, I would take 0:00:42.800 --> 0:00:46.040 that time and repurpose it for an even longer quote 0:00:46.400 --> 0:00:49.240 from one of my favorite bands of all time. Fair Enough. 0:00:49.280 --> 0:00:50.680 You know, some day we should really put together a 0:00:50.680 --> 0:00:53.240 playlist of all of the songs that would have mentioned. 0:00:53.880 --> 0:00:58.600 Some of them are not safe for work. Like I 0:00:58.640 --> 0:01:01.360 try to, I try to avoid those, but sometimes when 0:01:01.400 --> 0:01:05.840 I I get a little, I get a little rambunctious, punch, 0:01:06.160 --> 0:01:08.360 a little bungee. At the end of the week, Vim 0:01:08.360 --> 0:01:11.600 and Vinegar, and especially when it's like two minutes before 0:01:11.640 --> 0:01:14.080 we're supposed to start recording, and I realized, hey, I 0:01:14.080 --> 0:01:15.959 don't have a song lyric to go at the front 0:01:15.959 --> 0:01:17.760 of the show. I have to admit that every single 0:01:17.760 --> 0:01:21.640 time Joe and I are are podcasting alone with without 0:01:21.680 --> 0:01:23.560 you and what you will be doing very soon, we 0:01:23.680 --> 0:01:26.640 will because you are going on vacations. I will. I'll 0:01:26.640 --> 0:01:29.280 be cruising around. That is I believe where Joe is 0:01:29.400 --> 0:01:33.320 right now, although he could be following my footsteps to Europa. 0:01:34.000 --> 0:01:36.119 Every time that Joe and I are in the studio alone, 0:01:36.240 --> 0:01:39.480 like we we always it's like knol hits record, Null 0:01:39.520 --> 0:01:41.840 are super producer, and then one or the other of 0:01:41.920 --> 0:01:45.160 us goes, we haven't chosen a quote yet? Why did 0:01:45.240 --> 0:01:49.160 Jonathan start that? As like a standard way of opening 0:01:49.160 --> 0:01:50.960 the show. What I should do is also go back 0:01:51.000 --> 0:01:53.960 and find the first episode where I did that and 0:01:54.040 --> 0:01:58.120 just start writing down, like how many times has have 0:01:58.320 --> 0:02:01.920 you used the same four songs? Right? I know that 0:02:02.040 --> 0:02:04.120 I know that there are certain songs I've used more 0:02:04.160 --> 0:02:06.560 than once, and in fact, I almost started this one 0:02:06.680 --> 0:02:10.120 with a song I'm pretty sure I've used before. But 0:02:10.400 --> 0:02:13.360 all of that put aside, we're wasting time and time 0:02:13.440 --> 0:02:16.720 is precious. Time is so precious. Every second counts in 0:02:16.880 --> 0:02:21.240 every millisecond, every nanosecond counts, and we were learning that 0:02:21.639 --> 0:02:23.880 what we think of as a second may not actually 0:02:23.960 --> 0:02:28.799 be a second. No, well kind of okay. So so 0:02:28.960 --> 0:02:32.040 news broke at the end of May, the year which 0:02:32.080 --> 0:02:35.320 we are recording this, in that researchers had created a 0:02:35.360 --> 0:02:39.480 new clock so much more precise than existing clocks that 0:02:39.560 --> 0:02:42.280 were like maybe going to have to change the definition 0:02:42.280 --> 0:02:45.080 of a second. And that got us thinking about the 0:02:45.160 --> 0:02:48.360 history and the future of time keeping, right, And this 0:02:48.440 --> 0:02:50.720 also means, by the way that we have to redefine 0:02:50.800 --> 0:02:54.320 what a second is, by its very nature, we're eventually 0:02:54.360 --> 0:02:56.239 gonna have to readefine one, a New York minute really 0:02:56.280 --> 0:03:02.680 mass fair enough. It's not that our idea of what 0:03:02.760 --> 0:03:05.880 a New York minute or or a second is wrong. 0:03:05.919 --> 0:03:09.080 A second is a second. It's the machines that we 0:03:09.200 --> 0:03:12.040 used to tell time that are that are wrong or 0:03:12.120 --> 0:03:16.359 at the very least imprecise. So okay, you know how 0:03:16.400 --> 0:03:19.480 like how like digital clocks that aren't connected to the internet, 0:03:19.520 --> 0:03:22.080 like like the clock in your car, or an analog 0:03:22.200 --> 0:03:26.040 risk to watcher a wall clock, you know, analog meaning 0:03:26.120 --> 0:03:29.079 like has hands and gears, like like it's the kind 0:03:29.080 --> 0:03:31.240 of clock where you look at it and then you think, 0:03:31.760 --> 0:03:34.240 I remember, I used to know how to tell time 0:03:34.280 --> 0:03:36.840 this way. When I was first writing these notes, I 0:03:37.000 --> 0:03:41.200 I originally started to type old fashioned and then stopped 0:03:41.280 --> 0:03:44.120 myself because where I felt so anxious and where you 0:03:44.160 --> 0:03:46.280 could at least say, like when Mickey's big hand is 0:03:46.320 --> 0:03:49.480 on the two and his little hand is on the three. 0:03:50.280 --> 0:03:52.600 But but so these clocks that aren't connected to the 0:03:52.640 --> 0:03:57.440 interwebs slowly go off time, right, And that's because the 0:03:57.480 --> 0:04:02.640 mechanisms that drive them aren't white measuring seconds correctly, and 0:04:02.680 --> 0:04:06.080 the difference slowly adds up until it's noticeable to even 0:04:06.120 --> 0:04:08.640 our very slow brains. Right. And we could be talking 0:04:08.800 --> 0:04:13.880 about fractions of a second of an error, but eventually 0:04:13.880 --> 0:04:16.120 those fractions of a second add up to a second, 0:04:16.160 --> 0:04:18.600 and eventually those seconds add up to a minute. Now, 0:04:18.640 --> 0:04:21.200 this takes a lot of time, depending on how precise 0:04:21.279 --> 0:04:25.040 that clock happens to be, But even even if you're 0:04:25.040 --> 0:04:29.039 talking super small errors, it does add up over time, 0:04:29.160 --> 0:04:32.320 oh absolutely. And while it may not be terribly important 0:04:32.400 --> 0:04:36.680 to us, there are mechanical applications or digital applications rather, 0:04:36.720 --> 0:04:39.920 in which it becomes very very important. Yes, and uh, 0:04:40.839 --> 0:04:45.680 clocks these days are are even even old fashioned analog 0:04:45.800 --> 0:04:48.720 clocks are really pretty good at doing what they do. 0:04:49.240 --> 0:04:53.400 But that has not always been as precise the case. Yeah, 0:04:53.400 --> 0:04:55.560 As it turns out, if we want to talk about 0:04:56.160 --> 0:05:00.359 the way we are now being able to to find 0:05:00.360 --> 0:05:04.040 a second and keep that time as precisely as we 0:05:04.200 --> 0:05:07.839 currently know how to do it, behoods us to look 0:05:07.920 --> 0:05:13.320 back into our distant past and learn about the history 0:05:13.360 --> 0:05:17.039 of time keeping. Ah. Yeah, because the concept of a 0:05:17.160 --> 0:05:22.000 second is, like in the Grand scheme of humanity, relatively new. Yeah, yeah, 0:05:22.080 --> 0:05:25.320 especially when it comes to time. In fact, the original 0:05:25.800 --> 0:05:28.800 version of a second had more to do with geography 0:05:28.920 --> 0:05:33.120 than with time passing. So you know, I was gonna 0:05:33.360 --> 0:05:36.760 bust out the way Back Machine, but I don't know. 0:05:36.880 --> 0:05:38.360 Do you think I could handle a trip all the 0:05:38.360 --> 0:05:40.960 way back to ancient Egypt? I mean, we haven't taken 0:05:41.000 --> 0:05:43.280 it that far back in a long time. We I 0:05:43.440 --> 0:05:45.320 don't think I've ever taken it that far back. Do 0:05:45.360 --> 0:05:47.440 you think it's safe to be in the way Back 0:05:47.520 --> 0:05:50.240 machine and talk about time that much? Do you think 0:05:50.240 --> 0:05:51.840 it's going to get mad at you could get a 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:54.080 little time you want? You know what? You only live 0:05:54.160 --> 0:06:04.279 once into the way back machine. You go, okay, all right, 0:06:04.320 --> 0:06:07.159 now we just have to here's the problem. The all 0:06:07.160 --> 0:06:09.279 the digits are hieroglyphs when you want to go to 0:06:09.279 --> 0:06:13.480 ancient Egypt. So it's let's see it's this is ticked 0:06:13.480 --> 0:06:20.480 off kitty cat uh uh, snakehead person and block. All right, 0:06:22.520 --> 0:06:24.320 I got it right in the first try. Okay, So 0:06:25.040 --> 0:06:29.480 here we are back in ancient Egypt. Now, to be fair, 0:06:30.200 --> 0:06:34.039 we believe that timekeeping may go back further than the 0:06:34.080 --> 0:06:37.240 ancient Egyptians, but it's so uncertain that I don't even 0:06:37.240 --> 0:06:40.880 trust the way back machine. Yeah, there are there's a 0:06:40.880 --> 0:06:45.680 possibility that the Sumerians had this covered pretty much right, 0:06:45.680 --> 0:06:48.640 but we don't have any evidence of the Sumerians actually 0:06:48.680 --> 0:06:53.360 building any sort of time keeping device of any sort. Also, 0:06:53.440 --> 0:06:57.600 my cuneiform is really rusty. Yeah, I I I'm barely 0:06:57.800 --> 0:07:01.120 hanging on with the hieroglyphs as it is. So one 0:07:01.160 --> 0:07:04.120 thing that we should mention though about those Sumerians. They 0:07:04.160 --> 0:07:07.520 had something that will later on factor in importantly in 0:07:07.560 --> 0:07:12.200 the timekeeping discussion. They loved the number sixty a lot, 0:07:12.880 --> 0:07:15.119 like a whole bunch. Yeah, the Egyptians loved the number 0:07:15.120 --> 0:07:18.960 twelve and the Sumerians loved the number sixty, and sixty 0:07:19.000 --> 0:07:20.840 is kind of a cool number. It makes it really 0:07:20.880 --> 0:07:23.240 easy to deal with certain fractions because there's so many 0:07:23.320 --> 0:07:26.640 numbers that are uh that sixty is divisible by so 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:29.880 one through six all of those are divisible, or sixties 0:07:29.920 --> 0:07:33.360 divisible by all those uh ten, twelve, fifteen, twenty, and thirty, 0:07:33.400 --> 0:07:36.200 which starts to sound familiar when you start thinking about clocks. 0:07:36.640 --> 0:07:39.000 And so this, this this base of six kind of 0:07:39.040 --> 0:07:42.400 concept is something that was adopted by a lot of 0:07:42.480 --> 0:07:46.960 civilizations from that time and and and location. Right, the Babylonians, 0:07:47.000 --> 0:07:50.160 they said, hey, you know, we didn't dig everything you 0:07:50.200 --> 0:07:55.520 Sumerians did, but we like this sexygesimal base system. Uh 0:07:55.600 --> 0:07:59.280 So we're gonna use that for our astronomy. Astronomical calculations. 0:07:59.280 --> 0:08:01.560 We're gonna when we're exploring stuff in the sky and 0:08:01.560 --> 0:08:04.920 we're describing how it moves and the relationship of different 0:08:04.960 --> 0:08:07.320 stars to one another. This is the bass system we're 0:08:07.360 --> 0:08:09.280 gonna use because it makes it very easy to to 0:08:09.400 --> 0:08:12.040 divide by all these different numbers. Sharing kind of based 0:08:12.080 --> 0:08:14.480 on that. The Greeks also picked it up, yes, and 0:08:14.560 --> 0:08:17.920 so that ended up being very important further down the line. 0:08:18.520 --> 0:08:21.880 But we'll rejoin that, because that's like medieval Europe, y'all. 0:08:21.960 --> 0:08:24.040 When we have to get to the point we're applying 0:08:24.040 --> 0:08:26.360 it to time. So if they weren't using it to 0:08:26.400 --> 0:08:28.960 describe time, what were they using it for. Well, besides 0:08:29.000 --> 0:08:32.440 the astronomical calculations, they were starting to talk about using 0:08:32.520 --> 0:08:40.280 it to describe geometric features and also the describing geography itself. Yeah, 0:08:40.360 --> 0:08:43.959 not not just space geography, but geography right here on Earth. Yes, yes, 0:08:44.080 --> 0:08:46.520 so that you could be able to say things like 0:08:46.720 --> 0:08:49.280 where one place is in relation to this other place, 0:08:49.280 --> 0:08:51.480 other than just all right, you're gonna go down this 0:08:51.720 --> 0:08:54.080 road away for about five minutes, and then you're going 0:08:54.120 --> 0:08:57.880 to take a rat turn the yield crisp crane. If 0:08:57.920 --> 0:09:00.880 you see a guy playing a banjo, you gone too far, 0:09:01.720 --> 0:09:05.280 turn around, come back. Yeah, that's that. I wish that 0:09:05.320 --> 0:09:08.160 I knew the ancient Greek for crispy cream, yeah, or 0:09:08.200 --> 0:09:12.680 banjo at any rate. Uh. The sexogasmal system was used 0:09:12.679 --> 0:09:16.319 to help define these things and arrest knees. Use the 0:09:16.360 --> 0:09:19.160 system to divide a circle into sixty parts to create 0:09:19.160 --> 0:09:24.839 a geographic system of latitude. Um Hipparchus normalized these lines, 0:09:24.880 --> 0:09:27.280 making them parallel because before they were kind of wavy. 0:09:27.440 --> 0:09:30.880 The essentially well arrest the knees used them to connect 0:09:30.960 --> 0:09:34.760 places that he thought were particularly interesting, which didn't necessarily 0:09:34.800 --> 0:09:36.760 mean they went in a straight line. They might lean 0:09:36.800 --> 0:09:38.480 a little to the right, like, hey, this place is 0:09:38.520 --> 0:09:39.800 kind of cool, you might want to check that out. 0:09:39.880 --> 0:09:44.520 D Yeah. So Hipparcus was like, no, we're gonna normalize 0:09:44.520 --> 0:09:46.600 this stuff, make it a lot easier. And he also 0:09:46.640 --> 0:09:49.760 developed a system of longitude, which had three hundred sixty degrees. 0:09:50.040 --> 0:09:52.880 Then you have Claudius Ptolemy, who expanded on this and 0:09:53.000 --> 0:09:56.640 subdivided the three sixty degrees of latitude and longitude into 0:09:56.720 --> 0:10:00.680 smaller segments. So he divided each degree into sixty parts, 0:10:00.760 --> 0:10:04.640 and each of those sixty parts he's subdivided into sixty 0:10:04.800 --> 0:10:07.720 smaller parts. Okay, so so so that's where you get 0:10:07.800 --> 0:10:10.680 that's where you get minutes and seconds, right. The first 0:10:11.120 --> 0:10:16.240 the larger subdivisions were known as the partists minute prima, 0:10:16.480 --> 0:10:20.320 or the minutes, and then you had the second ones, 0:10:20.400 --> 0:10:24.079 known as the partisan minute secunda or second minute, or 0:10:24.160 --> 0:10:26.840 later just second. But it would take more than a 0:10:26.880 --> 0:10:30.359 thousand years for that stuff to be actually applied towards timekeeping. 0:10:30.360 --> 0:10:33.720 It was really applied toward map making and geography. Okay, 0:10:33.760 --> 0:10:37.080 but so I mean around the same time ish stuff 0:10:37.160 --> 0:10:40.240 was happening with early forms of clocks, Yes, sort of 0:10:40.679 --> 0:10:42.920 the Egyptians. You know, if we look around right here, 0:10:43.120 --> 0:10:45.040 you just look a little bit over to the right. Okay, 0:10:45.200 --> 0:10:48.760 you notice there's that big tall obelisk over there, all right, 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:52.520 So that obelisk, it's for a real important reason. It's 0:10:52.600 --> 0:10:55.400 there to tell you when it's in the early part 0:10:55.400 --> 0:10:57.880 of the day versus the later part of the day. Yeah, 0:10:57.960 --> 0:11:01.319 in case you're not aware that it's now later than 0:11:01.360 --> 0:11:05.079 it was earlier. You can look at the shadow. I've 0:11:05.080 --> 0:11:08.280 taken naps where I've gotten up really confused. So actually 0:11:08.360 --> 0:11:10.400 that that could be very helpful that moment where you 0:11:10.440 --> 0:11:13.240 wake up and you aren't even aware of which pyramids 0:11:13.280 --> 0:11:17.080 you're sleeping, like what time of day it is. So yeah, 0:11:17.080 --> 0:11:21.040 these are were very basic clocks. They essentially divided the 0:11:21.120 --> 0:11:24.880 day up into before noon and afternoon, but they also 0:11:24.920 --> 0:11:28.120 would show when the longest or shortest day of the 0:11:28.200 --> 0:11:29.880 year happened to be. If it was the longest day 0:11:29.880 --> 0:11:31.640 of the year, the shadow would be shorter. It was 0:11:31.679 --> 0:11:33.600 the shortest day of the the year, the shadow would be longer, 0:11:34.520 --> 0:11:38.679 so you could tell kind of the time of year. Yeah, 0:11:38.720 --> 0:11:40.679 so you'd be like, wow, it's really cold out. Also, 0:11:40.760 --> 0:11:45.680 shortest day of the year. Interesting. Um, So the sun 0:11:45.720 --> 0:11:49.560 dial itself would show up in fred BC. So this 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:52.600 is like two thousand years after those obelisks were the 0:11:52.640 --> 0:11:56.880 early stages of timekeeping. Now these this is also courtesy 0:11:56.920 --> 0:11:59.960 of the Egyptians. So we're just gonna stay here then 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:03.040 chat about it. The device, the sun dials, had multiple 0:12:03.040 --> 0:12:05.199 divisions on it to help divide up the day a 0:12:05.240 --> 0:12:08.720 little bit better. Also, once you got to noon, you 0:12:08.800 --> 0:12:11.520 had to turn the sun dial a hundred eighty degrees 0:12:11.600 --> 0:12:15.320 around so it would continue to keep time properly. So 0:12:15.440 --> 0:12:18.160 this is the first instance of having to wind a 0:12:18.240 --> 0:12:22.120 clock so that it keeps time. Um. So the Egyptians 0:12:22.120 --> 0:12:25.199 divide the daylight hours into twelve segments. They were really 0:12:25.240 --> 0:12:28.360 big on that number twelve, remember, which is fortunate since 0:12:28.840 --> 0:12:30.920 again sixty is divisible by twelve, so that will come 0:12:30.960 --> 0:12:34.040 in hand you later. So they thought, let's divide up 0:12:34.040 --> 0:12:37.520 the day into twelve, the daylight hours into twelve segments. 0:12:37.840 --> 0:12:40.560 So there became twelve periods or hours of daylight in 0:12:40.600 --> 0:12:44.600 a day. But since the amount of daylight changes throughout 0:12:44.600 --> 0:12:47.760 the year, then the the length of an hour changed 0:12:47.920 --> 0:12:51.600 throughout the year. Okay, So so light time was was 0:12:52.240 --> 0:12:57.040 twelve hours to twelve periods, and then nighttime was night. 0:12:57.160 --> 0:13:00.600 Nighttime at first was nothing. Nighttime was just not the 0:13:00.720 --> 0:13:04.280 day was just go go home. It's just like there's 0:13:04.320 --> 0:13:06.880 nothing to do. Go to sleep. You know, there's no 0:13:08.960 --> 0:13:11.920 you don't have Netflix, we have only so much oil 0:13:12.000 --> 0:13:15.520 to burn. Go to sleep. So yeah, and at first 0:13:15.600 --> 0:13:19.240 nighttime was nothing. But then the astronomers in Egypt, they 0:13:19.280 --> 0:13:22.000 began to develop tools where they were studying the movement 0:13:22.000 --> 0:13:25.880 of stars, and they divided up the night hour nighttime 0:13:26.040 --> 0:13:29.240 hours into twelve as well. So you had twelve nighttime 0:13:29.280 --> 0:13:32.000 hours twelve daytime hours for a total of twenty four 0:13:32.280 --> 0:13:35.080 periods in a day. Right, And they again were not 0:13:35.400 --> 0:13:38.000 fixed length, right, It all depended on what time of year. 0:13:38.080 --> 0:13:41.800 So literally, in the summer you had longer hours than 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:44.520 you did in the winter. So time did not pass 0:13:44.600 --> 0:13:48.080 the same way from a from the perspective of counting 0:13:48.120 --> 0:13:51.240 the hours, it passed the same way in a different sense. 0:13:51.240 --> 0:13:55.719 If you're not concerned about what quote unquote time is it, uh, 0:13:56.200 --> 0:13:59.640 that's trying to think about going about your day like 0:13:59.720 --> 0:14:03.200 that is very confounding to me. Well, as it turned out, 0:14:03.520 --> 0:14:06.440 most people back then really just need to know is 0:14:06.480 --> 0:14:08.880 it early enough for me to do work? Is it 0:14:09.000 --> 0:14:10.640 getting to the point where it's going to be too 0:14:10.720 --> 0:14:12.960 hot to do work? Is it the time to eat? 0:14:13.360 --> 0:14:15.760 Is it the time to not be awake anymore? Really 0:14:15.880 --> 0:14:17.760 was pretty you know, there weren't a whole lot of 0:14:17.800 --> 0:14:20.320 evites that people had to respond to with yes, no, 0:14:20.520 --> 0:14:24.400 or maybe. They were really kind of simple in that way. Now, 0:14:24.880 --> 0:14:27.240 the Greeks were the first to introduce the idea of 0:14:27.320 --> 0:14:30.200 fixed length hours, but they did this so that they 0:14:30.200 --> 0:14:33.880 could make astronomical calculations. They didn't do it so that 0:14:33.920 --> 0:14:37.200 people would keep regular time. In fact, most people didn't 0:14:37.320 --> 0:14:41.840 bother with that. They stuck with the more casual variable 0:14:41.880 --> 0:14:45.320 our system, and in fact that would hold true until 0:14:45.360 --> 0:14:49.080 the Middle Ages. Um, but that's not the only type 0:14:49.080 --> 0:14:51.160 of clock that was around at this time. Oh yeah. 0:14:51.680 --> 0:14:55.760 Also right here in ancient Egypt, where we absolutely are, 0:14:56.440 --> 0:15:02.600 were water clocks that were probably developed here. Again, you know, 0:15:02.840 --> 0:15:05.720 like it's basically whatever you dig up is your evidence 0:15:05.800 --> 0:15:08.280 for what was developed when and if it didn't survive 0:15:08.400 --> 0:15:13.800 then you Yeah, but so one was water clock was 0:15:13.800 --> 0:15:17.520 definitely found in a Menhotep, the first tomb, dating from 0:15:17.520 --> 0:15:23.840 around five b C. And uh, they water clocks covered 0:15:24.040 --> 0:15:29.040 a few of sundials or or astronomy clocks pitfalls because 0:15:29.080 --> 0:15:33.280 you could use them when it was cloudy, crazy um, 0:15:33.360 --> 0:15:36.080 and you could also use them as stop watches. The 0:15:36.080 --> 0:15:38.200 Greeks would later pick up on them too, though not 0:15:38.360 --> 0:15:41.480 until around like three b C we think, and they 0:15:41.520 --> 0:15:45.360 called them clip sidras, which I love, which basically means 0:15:45.400 --> 0:15:48.680 water thieves. And it's interesting they're called water thieves. It's 0:15:48.720 --> 0:15:55.160 specifically because of the physical way the clock keeps time, right, yeah, yeah, 0:15:55.160 --> 0:15:57.080 So so the idea here is that you've got a 0:15:57.240 --> 0:16:00.960 stone bowl with a very small hole near the bottom 0:16:01.120 --> 0:16:04.480 through which water would flow hypothetically a kind of sort 0:16:04.480 --> 0:16:07.400 of more or less constant rate. You put this, You 0:16:07.440 --> 0:16:09.680 put this bowl with a hole in it inside a 0:16:09.720 --> 0:16:13.280 larger basin that's filled with water, and the water will 0:16:13.400 --> 0:16:17.520 slowly fill the bowl if if, if the inside of 0:16:17.520 --> 0:16:19.920 the bowl is then marked with lines, you can tell 0:16:20.000 --> 0:16:23.680 the rough passage of hours by watching the water mark. Yeah, 0:16:23.680 --> 0:16:26.960 I've seen a similar one where it was again going 0:16:27.000 --> 0:16:29.640 back to the Egyptian times, where you had a container 0:16:29.680 --> 0:16:31.360 with a very small hole in it, and it would 0:16:31.360 --> 0:16:34.840 allow water to flow through one container into a second container. 0:16:34.840 --> 0:16:37.040 And the second container have a bobber in it. Oh, 0:16:37.040 --> 0:16:39.600 sure that had a water mark that could tell you, Yeah, 0:16:39.640 --> 0:16:42.120 you look at the bobber and you'd say, all right, so, uh, 0:16:42.520 --> 0:16:45.280 three marks have gone by. We're going to call those hours. 0:16:45.320 --> 0:16:48.920 But keep in mind that these devices also weren't precise 0:16:49.040 --> 0:16:53.200 time keeping devices. A rough idea. Yeah, and and I'm 0:16:53.240 --> 0:16:55.160 sure that I mean, you know, as water war would 0:16:55.240 --> 0:16:58.200 change the shape of the whole of the given device, 0:16:58.440 --> 0:17:00.800 your your concept of a pure it of time would 0:17:00.840 --> 0:17:05.199 would also change. But okay, so, uh supposedly devices very 0:17:05.280 --> 0:17:08.480 much like this. We're used to time speeches in courts 0:17:08.520 --> 0:17:12.600 of law circa four thirty BC in Athens, so even 0:17:13.320 --> 0:17:18.359 and ancient Greece we told our politicians, yo, hey, shut 0:17:18.440 --> 0:17:23.880 up for serious, come on, man, sit down, John They 0:17:23.960 --> 0:17:26.120 and okay, I think I think we're going to finally 0:17:26.160 --> 0:17:28.640 have to leap ahead a little bit. Or do I mean, 0:17:28.720 --> 0:17:30.080 I mean, do you want do you want to save 0:17:30.119 --> 0:17:32.000 it for medieval times or do you want to you 0:17:32.040 --> 0:17:34.240 know what? We we can save it for medieval times. 0:17:34.480 --> 0:17:38.520 I'm a little partial to medieval times, Okay, fair enough, 0:17:38.520 --> 0:17:42.199 fair enough, so so I'll just mention that that these 0:17:42.440 --> 0:17:46.640 water clocks went mechanical after a few hundred years by 0:17:46.640 --> 0:17:49.760 by letting water the Grecian water clocks, I should say, 0:17:49.880 --> 0:17:53.159 by letting water drip measuredly into a chamber like you 0:17:53.200 --> 0:17:55.800 were just talking about, you can you can raise not 0:17:55.880 --> 0:17:58.919 just a little bobbin, but like a floating piston, and 0:17:58.960 --> 0:18:02.159 therefore do simple work like like pushing a marker or 0:18:02.240 --> 0:18:04.919 even a gear to turn a pointer. And so between 0:18:05.000 --> 0:18:07.960 like one d b c E and five hundred CE, 0:18:08.440 --> 0:18:11.520 Greeks and Romans both we're trying to make the flow 0:18:11.560 --> 0:18:14.760 more constant by regulating the water pressure. And as a 0:18:14.760 --> 0:18:17.360 result of that, some of the devices that they were 0:18:17.440 --> 0:18:19.880 making could like ring a bell or a gong when 0:18:19.880 --> 0:18:21.800 the water would hit a certain point, or they would 0:18:21.840 --> 0:18:25.240 even like push a mechanism to open little decorative hatches 0:18:25.359 --> 0:18:28.560 containing small figurines that would dance around or or move 0:18:28.800 --> 0:18:33.879 astronaut astrological models. Yeah. Um, And And meanwhile in China, 0:18:34.560 --> 0:18:37.640 mechanical water clocks were also in use from around two 0:18:37.720 --> 0:18:42.480 hundred through around thirt hundred CE, including at least one 0:18:43.000 --> 0:18:46.919 that used this big old water wheel like story and 0:18:46.960 --> 0:18:51.480 a half tall water wheel to power dozens of elaborate 0:18:51.560 --> 0:18:54.280 sounds and mechanisms that would dance around and do weird 0:18:54.280 --> 0:18:57.240 little stuff. Man, and I thought the uh, the church 0:18:57.320 --> 0:19:01.560 near my neighborhood, whenever it's noon or six pm, it 0:19:01.640 --> 0:19:05.040 goes pretty much bonkers with its chimes. I imagine it 0:19:05.080 --> 0:19:08.879 had to be even more spectacular with something along those lines, 0:19:09.520 --> 0:19:13.600 although maybe not necessarily quite as regular, Yeah, I would 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:16.560 imagine not, but still still a party. Yeah. Yeah, So 0:19:16.680 --> 0:19:18.400 let's get back in the way back machine. We're gonna 0:19:18.440 --> 0:19:22.600 actually jump ahead to medieval Europe and we'll we'll get 0:19:22.600 --> 0:19:26.960 out there. So did you bring your nose? Come on, 0:19:27.560 --> 0:19:31.440 I worked the Renaissance Festival. I've been to dragon Con. 0:19:31.800 --> 0:19:35.680 I can handle medieval Europe. Here we go, Here we go. 0:19:43.200 --> 0:19:49.280 Welcome to medieval Europe. Huzzah. Where food is on a stick. 0:19:50.000 --> 0:19:52.920 And this doesn't look like the Resaissance festival and all. 0:19:53.000 --> 0:19:55.880 This is kind of awful. Yeah, I don't see any 0:19:55.960 --> 0:20:00.560 chicken fried bacon. There's actually awful in the street in Soul. 0:20:00.760 --> 0:20:03.639 That's the kind of awful this is anyway, So it's 0:20:03.680 --> 0:20:07.040 worse than our pus Field trip. Yeah, that was man. 0:20:07.440 --> 0:20:10.960 You never thought you'd look back on that with like nostalgia. 0:20:11.440 --> 0:20:15.760 But here we are in fourteenth century medieval Europe. This 0:20:15.800 --> 0:20:19.920 is about the time where mechanical clocks began to become 0:20:19.960 --> 0:20:24.240 a thing. And at those in those early clocks, they 0:20:24.280 --> 0:20:29.600 had our markings. Uh, some had minute markings, but none 0:20:29.600 --> 0:20:33.840 of them had second markets. And uh. So it would 0:20:33.880 --> 0:20:38.400 actually take about a couple hundred years really sixteenth century 0:20:38.520 --> 0:20:42.200 medieval Europe where you started seeing minutes as a standard 0:20:42.400 --> 0:20:45.040 marking of time. And this is where we take that 0:20:45.160 --> 0:20:48.639 concept we talked about with the geography, and it was 0:20:48.680 --> 0:20:52.440 converted into a time keeping concept. The idea of well, 0:20:52.480 --> 0:20:56.199 we've got these these twelve periods of daylight and twelve 0:20:56.240 --> 0:21:00.000 periods of nighttime that the uh, the Egyptians had proposed. 0:21:00.119 --> 0:21:05.200 The Greeks had formalized that into actual fixed length hours, 0:21:05.320 --> 0:21:08.760 uh for their calculations. We're gonna do that for the 0:21:08.760 --> 0:21:12.199 purposes of keeping time. Then we're going to subdivide that. 0:21:12.440 --> 0:21:15.119 And because they were working with twelves and twenty fours, 0:21:15.119 --> 0:21:18.840 they said, how about we look at sixty. We're looking at, 0:21:18.960 --> 0:21:22.680 you know, a division of sixty smaller increments that make 0:21:22.760 --> 0:21:29.520 up one full hour, and then eventually you think about 0:21:29.520 --> 0:21:31.119 that long enough and you realize, all right, well we 0:21:31.160 --> 0:21:34.159 can subdivide that even further. A minute is still a 0:21:34.160 --> 0:21:36.840 pretty long amount of time depending on what you need 0:21:36.880 --> 0:21:40.760 to do. Right, some things, a minute's no time at all, right, 0:21:40.840 --> 0:21:43.680 If if it's something really fun that you love to do. 0:21:44.000 --> 0:21:47.680 Maybe you're riding on a horse, jousting your Henry the eighth, 0:21:48.200 --> 0:21:51.080 a minute is like no time at all. But maybe 0:21:51.240 --> 0:21:54.480 you're being accused of witchcraft, being dunked under the water. 0:21:54.640 --> 0:21:57.160 A minute's a really long time. At that point you're 0:21:57.160 --> 0:21:59.480 going like, can we break this period up a little bit? 0:21:59.440 --> 0:22:01.280 And maybe we and look at like a fifteen second 0:22:01.320 --> 0:22:04.200 interval if you're gonna be you know, slowly like drowning me, 0:22:04.400 --> 0:22:07.920 like i'd like to can we negotiate this at all? 0:22:08.640 --> 0:22:11.560 So they looked at the round face of the clock 0:22:11.600 --> 0:22:13.840 that they had designed, and the division of the day 0:22:13.960 --> 0:22:16.640 into really twelve segments. You can think of twenty four, 0:22:16.680 --> 0:22:19.560 but really most clocks are twelve segments, right, And then 0:22:19.560 --> 0:22:21.720 we just amend either a M or p M in 0:22:21.720 --> 0:22:24.600 our brains to denote whether it's in the morning or 0:22:24.680 --> 0:22:28.199 it's in the evening UH, and they adopted that sexic 0:22:28.280 --> 0:22:31.560 asimal system, and each hour was divided by sixty and 0:22:31.600 --> 0:22:34.720 two minutes and dividenes again in sixty into seconds. And 0:22:34.760 --> 0:22:37.080 this was the first time we really had a definition 0:22:37.119 --> 0:22:40.399 of a second in terms of timekeeping. UH and and 0:22:40.480 --> 0:22:43.880 all of this, I imagine was also partially driven by 0:22:44.000 --> 0:22:47.080 just the mechanical complexity of clocks in the capacity. But 0:22:47.240 --> 0:22:50.080 because a mechanical clock, if if you guys aren't familiar 0:22:50.119 --> 0:22:52.480 with the inner workings of a of your basic wall 0:22:52.480 --> 0:22:54.600 clock or watch or something like that, is based on 0:22:54.800 --> 0:22:59.160