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Dreams the new podcast from the award winning Noiser Network. Join me Paul McGann as we explore life and death on Titanic. I'll delve into my own family story following my great uncle Jimmy as he tries to escape the engine room. We'll hear the harrowing tales of the victims and the testimonies of the lucky survivors.

Ruth Goodman (14:51)

I saw that ship sink and I saw that ship break in half.

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Ruth Goodman (15:00)

In ancient Persia, water clocks were used in agriculture, measuring out the time allotted to farmers for accessing public canals. While in Greece, some scholars believe water clocks may have been used to measure out clients visits in Athenian brothels. To us, water clocks may seem relatively crude, but they did lead to advances in scientific observation. In Alexandria in the early 3rd century BC, the Greek physician Herophilus took a portable version with him on house calls, which he used to monitor his patients pulse rates. The clocks helped him develop a more empirical approach to medicine. Before people had clocks in their own homes, they relied on public clocks to tell the time. Let's look at the example of Imperial China. Many Chinese towns and cities Were dominated by high towers containing drums or bells which were used to broadcast the time at regular intervals. According to the 2nd century Chinese scholar Cai Yong, when the night water clock runs out, the drum is beaten and people get up. When the day water clock runs out, the bell is struck and people go to rest. Imperial China was a huge bureaucracy and for it to run like clockwork, it needed, well, clocks. From the start of the Qin dynasty, water clocks were placed in every government office throughout the empire. Officials had to record not just the day, but also the exact time that they sent or received any correspondence. This emphasis on timekeeping meant that the mandarins had to be at work by a specific time. So they needed something at home to get them up and out of the house promptly too. One simple method was the incense clock. These could be fitted with alarms. Bells suspended on fine threads that the incense burnt through when it reached a certain point. Not all clocks in the imperial era were quite so basic. Around 1088, engineer and inventor Susong built an elaborate 36 foot high astronomical clock tower. Susong's clock used water power to drive a complex mechanism which told the time of day by means of rotating automata. Over a hundred miniature figures in Chinese dress held up signs, struck gongs, chimed bells and beat drums to sound the hours. The clock was topped off with an astronomical model showing the movement of stars and planets. Water clocks such as Susong's relied on gravity to power them. It's the same principle that you see at work in an hourglass when grains of sand or salt drop from one side to another after you've turned it. Gravity also played a part in the next great development in timekeeping which took place in the west in the Middle Ages. This was the introduction of counterbalanced weights to power a clock mechanism. The sound of passing time would never be the same again, as the gentle trickle of water was replaced by the relentless ticking of a clock. It's the middle of the 14th century and also the middle of the night. We're in Normandy, France to be precise. Were in a monk's cell in the abbey of Mont St Michel, built high on the rocky island of the same name. The cell belongs to brother Jacques. It's his job to ring the bell calling the other monks to prayer. The whole life of the monastery revolves around the observance of particular rites. At set times of the day and night. The walls of his cell are bare. His bed is a narrow slab of stone padded with straw. He shivers as he pulls the coarse blanket up to his neck. Not surprisingly, he's finding it hard to sleep. Maybe it's the moonlight streaming in through the window, or perhaps it's the weight of his responsibilities. Everything depends on him ringing the bell at the right time. That sound you can hear is a small wall mounted clock about 10 inches tall. In the silvery glow from the window, you can make out two weights hanging down from the bottom. Jacques mind is hyper alert as he watches the clock. He can see the highly polished brass mechanism gleam as the escape wheel slowly turns, driven by the slowly shifting position of the weights. The escape wheel is a spiked cog that advances the rotating dial on which the 24 hours of the day are inscribed to be measured off against a fixed hour hand. He has set the alarum, or alarm, to sound just before 3am, the time when he must ring the bell for Matins. But what if he didn't set it correctly? What if it fails to go off? What if the mechanism breaks? He knows he's being ridiculous, so he tries to think about something else. He counts his blessings. He's fed, has a roof over his head and enjoys the security and companionship of communal life. He knows he is trying his best to live a life that is pleasing to God. As his mind revolves contentedly around these thoughts, he feels himself drifting off, only to be roused almost immediately by the sound of the alarum sounding. He leaps from his bed and dashes off to ring the bell, calling his brothers to prayer. One of the earliest mechanical clocks we know of was installed in 1283 at Dunstable Priory in Bedfordshire, England. Like other clocks of the period, it wasn't there to tell a specific time down to the minute, but solely to ring out the hours, summoning the devout to prayer. That's how it is with clocks. There's often some specific human activity that leads to a new invention or development. The need in this case was regulating the life of religious communities. The clock at Dunstable Priory was quickly followed by others in England, including at Exeter cathedral and Old St Paul's in London. The age of the mechanical clock was underway. But something else was starting at this time. The rise of the merchant class. The regulation of commerce became just as important as the ordering of religious lives. The working day with deadlines and business meetings was another driving force behind timekeeping in early modern Europe. And of course, clocks, both public and private, had a role to play in this too. It wasn't just efficiency minded business people pushing for more accurate clocks. Scientists were too, in particular astronomers who were looking for a more accurate way of Measuring the movement of stars from around the 1580s, they wanted timepieces capable of showing minutes and even seconds. But clockmakers struggled to meet their demand. The technology just wasn't there. Then, in the mid 17th century, there was a breakthrough. On 25 December 1656, a brilliant 27 year old Dutch astronomer called Christiaan Huygens gave the world a novel Christmas present in the form of the first ever pendulum clock. His invention proved to be a big hit, and not just with astronomers. Middle class homeowners, the early adopters of their age, rushed to purchase these new household items. Styles and fashions developed as designers went to town on Hergen's basic concepts. Some hid the mechanism away inside an ornately decorated case. Others preferred to put the workings on display. Whatever its design, the clock had fully entered our homes. It was also soon to enter our pockets. The next major development in timekeeping technology came in 1675, and once again, Huygens was the man behind it. This was the invention of a nifty mechanism called the spiral balance spring. Instead of using gravity, the spiral balance spring harnessed the latent power of a wound up spring as it slowly uncoiled. Over time, this allowed for the creation of ever smaller timepieces, including the portable pocket watch that became all the rage. Keeping time to within a minute a day, these fashion items also set a new standard in accuracy. Pendulum clocks had to up their game if they wanted to compete. Longer pendulums with a smaller swinging arc were found to be more accurate. The long case clock began to appear in English homes, or the grandfather clock as it became known in the 19th century, thanks to a song by Henry Clay work called My Grandfather's Clock. In the Victorian era, clocks in the home were very much the preserve of the male head of the household, the paterfamilias. In fact, the weekly winding of the clock was about the only domestic chore that middle class men took it upon themselves to perform. Typical. This period saw a renewed emphasis on the Protestant work ethic, for which good timekeeping was obviously important. But not everyone had clocks in their home. Only the wealthy middle classes and above the working class had to make other arrangements. It's the 1870s. We're in an industrial town in the north of England. In the early hours of the morning, as dawn breaks, the grey sky is streaked with red and gold. The dark, looming silhouettes of factory chimneys appear on the horizon. A woman walks along the pavement. She carries a long pole about the size of a fishing rod. The woman stops at one of the terraced houses and uses the pole to tap on an upper story window. A moment later, the window opens. A head peers out blinking and nods in acknowledgment to the woman who moves on to the next house. This is Mrs. Waters, a professional knocker upper. She is employed by factory owners to make sure their workers make it to their early morning shifts. The job pays reasonably well. Mrs. Waters can afford to support her invalid husband and pay for her son's education. Her clients rely on her to keep the wheels of industry turning. Before she had a pole, Mrs. Waters used to knock on people's front doors. But the neighbours who didn't need to get up complained. Some knocker uppers use pea shooters to fire pellets against windows. Others make a din with rattles. Mrs. Waters prefers her trusty pole. The profession of knocker upper was a byproduct of the Industrial Revolution. With the rise of factories, working life revolved around shifts that took place at regular times. Each day, workers had to clock on and clock off. If they were late, their pay was docked. So if you didn't have an alarm clock in your house, you needed someone like Mrs. Waters to make sure you got up. Gradually, knocker uppers disappeared from the streets of Britain's industrial centres, though their discreet tap, tap, tapping could still be heard as late as the 1970s in some northern towns. Nowadays, the clock in the corner of your computer screen is exactly in sync with the one on your smartphone, thanks to atomic technology. But in the 19th century, synchronisation was harder. The time in Bristol was 10 minutes behind that in London, and the further west you went from Greenwich, the greater the time lag. The advent of the railways meant that local regions had to conform or passengers would miss their trains. One family decided to capitalise on this need and they started a business, literally selling Greenwich Mean time. For over 100 years, a member of the Belleville family was granted access to the clock at Greenwich Observatory. Several times a week, they would set their own clock, which was an extremely accurate example by the standards of the day, and then sell the time to their clients. The business ended in 1940 when Ruth, the last of the time selling Bellevilles, retired at the age of 86. Ruth Belleville retired due to old age, but her job was quickly to become redundant Anyway, because the 20th century saw a revolution in the way people tell the time. The first thing that happened was the invention of the quartz clock in 1928. Powered by a vibrating quartz crystal, it was thousands of times more accurate than anything that had come before. Then, in the 1950s, an even more precise method of measuring time came along when the world's first atomic clock was unveiled. Today's atomic clocks are accurate to within 1Ns every day, and by taking the average of a number of atomic clocks in different countries, the whole world operates at a universal standard time. Over the past few decades, these changes in the technology that drives clocks has also led to a transformation in their appearance, with digital clocks taking over from traditional analogue clock and watch faces over the course of the 20th century. Our homes and lives are full of timepieces now, on our phones and laptops, hanging on the wall, on our bedside tables and on our wrists. We're all clock watchers these days, though the clocks are usually numbers on a screen. But perhaps, like Epicurus, we should still remember to make the most of each passing moment. In the next episode, we dive into the surprising history of home entertainment. Georgian families amuse themselves by playing bullet pudding. A medieval countess swoons over tales of courtly love. And on a windswept island in the Bristol Channel, radio is born. That's next time on the curious history of your Home. Listen to the next episode today without waiting a week by subscribing to Noiser Plus. Head to www.noiser.comscriptions for more information.