A story of time?
One Day is the complete rotation of our location around the earth's axis.
This is the basis for our concept of time. Our longitude moves along our latitude.
It started with the observation of a regular pulse: the sun rises, moves over the sky and sinks under the horizon every day - the stars follow a certain path too.
Living at one location - and the people were pretty local - it was a matter of practise to read the position of the sun. It was important to know how long it will take the sun to disappear, because darkness was dangerous and we would have to make it to a save place "in time". The stars told us how far the next sunrise was away.
We realized the shadow of a tree/stick moved through the marks on the ground around it. The first rather precise local clock was invented.
But the sun can hide behind the clouds and so do the stars.
I guess we observed, that water constantly dropping from the ceiling of the cave makes a repeatable rhythm. Dropping into a bowl rises the waterlevel to a certain mark over time. A stopwatch was invented.
The size of the bowl to be filled was variable, the drops could be counted. For cooking an egg to soft, the sun dial was pretty useless, but 85 drops would have been a great mark.
We started to abstract the daily rhythm into shorter pulses, to fit our demand. We became independant of the visible sun and stars - at least at our standard location.
With more mobility, longer trips and sailing across the seas, we needed reliable clocks to be carried around. A stick aboard a ship is useless as a sundial. Where is east or west for the correct setup of our mobile sundial? How to move the cave with the drops around?
Somehow we realised, we could use sand as a replacement for water. We let it flow through a little opening between two containers and made it a nice abstraction of the "time flowing".
Of course these first sand glasses were not made of glass. They were to be opened carefully to check the sand level.
It took centuries to reach a point, were mankind was able to build a mechanical clock. The first ones were huge and local, but we managed to make them portable. The were not very precise and we had to synchronize them regularly with the real local time. The bells of the church made us check our pocket watch to show the local time.
We worked on more reliable and precise time interpreters. It was very important for the naviagtion at sea. To check our local position at sea, we need a precise clock. Well, I guess I don't have to tell you that, Herr Kaleun.
There were no regulated time zones. Every major location - village or town - had their own local time. With a more global view we invented the grid of longitudes and latitudes representing the change of our location under the sun. The Greenwich longitude moves along its latitude around the earth's axis in 24 hours. Greenwich 12.00 o'clock AM translates into our given local time zones around the globe.
Over time - many rotations of our longitudes - we were able to build more precise clocks. Today we synchronize our computers and digital watches with the constant pulses of atoms. But while checking the time, we still check the position of the sun - or better our location in relation to the sun. And a certain amount of time is still an abstract of our longitude moving around the earth's axis. To measure time intervals is to measure motion, relative to a given location.
Never say never, but this special time machine we all are thinking of is impossible. We are commonly not aware of our own concept of time - of how it works. We are used to live with this translated, abstract view of time and its flow. Everytime we don't understand how something works we start to dream, to believe, to imagine possibilities. The evolution of god and our interpretation followed a similar concept.
We wish or want to believe, there is a way to travel back and change events - maybe mistakes we made - or to observe and witness the great moments of history we are told.
We dream to jump into the future to discover these awesome worlds we settled, the brilliant technics we developed, the smart way of future living.
So let's dream on, it doesn't hurt. One day we may be able to leave this cage of time concept and float forward and backward through space and time. Who knows?
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