Time measurement changed mankind

Imagine measuring the time of study for an exam relying just on the movement of the stars in the sky. Or depending on the sun to schedule your work out time at the gym. Today it may be hard to imagine, but these were some of the ways that humanity used to measure the pace of time. These methods were inaccurate and may seem long overdue for those who now have a smartphone and an hour calculator within reach, but they have already shown the need to measure and calculate time since prehistory.

In the past, there were no accurate means for calculating time and the main aim was to guide hunting and agriculture. Today, we are constantly connected to time: we have a workday, commitments, schedules and tasks to accomplish. With remote jobs, we need to calculate hours worked online. If we work harder, we need a tool to calculate the resulting overtime. Measuring time is as important to buy bread at the bakery that will close in a few minutes as it is at the airport, just before boarding for a long trip.

Human beings did not come up with an hour calculator at hand, so several methods were developed throughout history in order to understand, plan and calculate the time before the clock was adopted. Nowadays, it is possible to calculate the time in hours, to calculate the precise elapsed time between hours and do it anywhere, since we may do it online. We no longer depend on the tools of the past and we have much more daily activities than we used to have two or three thousand years ago. Understanding and planning time has helped us in our evolution, so that today we can calculate hours, minutes and seconds accurately. But it hasn’t always been like that.