The Sands of Time

We have been so busy with BARNEYS & Bloomingdales and the rest of our outstanding group of Retailers that we have been remiss in not continuing the saga of “The History of Time”.  And while time marches on, both literally and figuratively, man’s quest to keep track of it more accurately continues to grow.  Our last entry discussed the Clepsydra and how it operated with water.  While this was a vast improvement over other methods of measuring time, it became obvious early on that water was messy to deal with in so many ways.  It freezes in the winter and evaporates in the summer.  Additionally, any surface in constant contact with the same water that is being circulated will develop algae.  If you don’t believe me, come on over and look at the small man made pond with circulating water in my back yard … I’m going to go clean it right after this blog post . But enough of my problems, as you can imagine, all of these “water” problems just create inaccuracies in time and as humans, we just won’t stand for that.  So we need something dry that can be circulated.  EUREKA !!!  Sand … and thus the invention of the hourglass.  In hindsight the hourglass seems like such a simple idea but really didn’t come into practical use until the early 1300’s … several hundred years after the development of the water fed Clepsydra.  The construction of the glass itself was a technological achievement and in combination with finding a material that was coarse enough to flow in homogenous units created, well … timing issues.  And today, while we view sand as the contents du jour of hourglasses, early version worked with not only sand but crushed eggshells or pulverized marble.  If you would like more information oh hourglasses, check out this article:Hourglasses.

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