Time: The Basis of Societal Structure

Ctesibius of Alexandria invented the first clock independent of the sun, and by 430 BCE
this clock, a klepsydra, was in common usage (Mintz, 2007). The oldest known calendar is in the
United Kingdom, and was used to track the moon phases 10,000 years ago (Smith, 2013). The
early peoples in Europe and Asia used these methods and various others to apply structure to
their surrounding world, and the institution of timekeeping was born. Even before the advent of
mechanical clocks, civilizations measured the time of year with stars and the time of day with
obelisks or sundials (Timekeeping and Clocks, 2012). As the human population evolved from
this state into a more advanced society, so did timekeeping. Modern clocks greatly increased the
precision of keeping time, and a calendar system, originating in Egypt, provided humanity with a
means to chronologically organize events (Andrewes, 2012). Timekeeping is necessary to
maintain social relationships, daily productivity, and civilization itself; therefore, it is the greatest
technological achievement ever made.

Humankinds ability to accurately measure time in relation to the length of the year and
day has improved greatly over the years. Water-clocks were used regularly until the invention of
a mechanical clock at approximately 1300 ADE that allowed for more precise measurements.
The effort of many inventors was poured into designing more accurate clocks with less need for
calibration, and the invention of the pendulum clock by Christiaan Huygens in 1656 allowed for
an accurate time within ten seconds (Pendulum clocks, 2007). The importance of an exact time
increased during the industrial revolution, when railroads had their trains scheduled down to the
minute. On November 18, 1883 the railroad companies in the United States set up the four North
American time zones still in use today to synchronize clocks nationwide ("Railroads create time
zones," 2013). The keeping of time has also enabled sailors to accurately measure their
longitudinal coordinate at sea, helping ships to stay on course (Andrewes, 2012). Timekeeping
has had the largest scope of influence on the world compared to every other invention
humankind has created. Every aspect of life is in some way influenced, maintained, or monitored
by time.

Time is the universal bridge allowing individuals to join into groups focused on
progressing toward a common goal. People fill their schedules with appointments which usually
require the coordination of multiple individuals, such as a conference, a presentation, or even a
doctors visit. Time management is an important skill in organizing everyday life, and it is a
necessity to anyone who wishes to accomplish a task before a set deadline (Bachara, n.d.). Using
time, people can plan the flow of their own lives, yet coexist with others within the population;
therefore, measuring time provides the general structure to life itself, while making working
together possible.
The system of timekeeping used today also gives people a setting in relation to the world
around them, as well as the ability to better predict future occurrences. Every person has
memories from his or her past that help him or her to discern the duration of the psychological
moment. People use the scale of time to order and separate their memories, a process called
succession, that allows them to make sense of their experiences in a logical and sharable way
(Block, 1990). The temporal perspective of the human mind is organized by the modern time
scale in every individual, allowing humans to merge ideas and organize their collective past into
a shared history. Both personal and societal chronological histories are built using ones


backward perspective and shifted into the forward perspective to estimate the likelihood of future
events (Mitchell, Russo & Pennington, 1989). By understanding the time interval for when
something normally occurs, humans use this method to anticipate events, from predicting the
arrival time at the end of a long car trip to forecasting the beginning of a hurricane season. The
concept of the future, and the events of the past, are given a comprehensible relationship when
measured against the scale of time (Block, 1990).

Timekeeping is an essential building block of civilization. One of the first civilizations,
the Babylonians, used their calendar to time religious events and communal gatherings that
unified them as a people (Andrewes, 2012). Cultural events, from solstice celebrations to
Christmas, have their dates agreed upon in todays society, which uses a common time system.
This universality gives humans the opportunity to operate as a whole and to attend these events
or start new ones. Without time, people would not be able to bind together into an organized
society with common goals or coordinate gatherings amongst themselves, and achievements
would be limited to the individual (Bergmann, 1992). The universal idea of a measured time
scale is the glue that allows different people to cooperate and civilization to function. No society
has ever existed without some means of keeping time, so time is crucial to the entire community
structure which the human world revolves around today (Andrewes, 2012).

As human civilization progresses, older ideas and technologies are often replaced with
newer, more efficient versions, but timekeeping will continue to exist regardless of its form.
Scheduled time is the base unit for measuring life, and its used on every level from the
individual to the universe. The precision of timekeeping will likely continue to advance in the
future beyond the atomic clocks in use today. Time is used to structure the operation of countless
technological systems, including cell phones and power distribution grids (Andrewes, 2012). In
the future, time will be used in regulating and organizing new technologies that do not even exist
yet. One future technology that timekeeping could influence would be time travel itself. Science
fiction has thoroughly explored the effect time travel could have on the current linear approach
to measuring time, and it would significantly alter the modern timekeeping system (O'Neill,
2013). The greatest technological achievement ever made by the human race is timekeeping
because it is used by everyone, constantly, to maintain the world we live in.









Literature Cited

Andrewes, W. J. H. (2012, January 15). A brief history of clocks. Scientific American.

Bachara, M. (n.d.). The importance of time management. Retrieved from
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Bergmann, W. (1992). The problem of time in sociology: An overview of the literature on the
state of theory and research on the `sociology of time', 1900-82. Time & Society, 1(81),
81-134. doi: 10.1177/0961463X92001001007

Block, R. (1990). Models of psychological time. Montana: Montana University.

Mintz, D. (2007, April). Water-clocks.

Mitchell, D., Russo, J. E., & Pennington, N. (1989). Back to the future: Temporal perspective in
the explanation of events. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 2(1), 25-38.

O'Neill, I. (2013, September 11). Brian cox: Time travel is easy! kinda. Discovery.

Pendulum clocks. In (2007). Information Please Database. Pearson Education, Inc.

Railroads create the first time zones. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.history.com/this-day-in-
history/railroads-create-the-first-time-zones

Smith, R. (2013). World's oldest calendar discovered in uk. National Geographic.

Timekeeping and clocks. (2012, January 18).