Alarm Clocks-They Started as a Wall Clock

Aahh the modern day alarm clock. Perhaps the single most annoying object in ones home.Nevertheless it is a reality of our modern day existence.Do not worry though, our ancestors have found the need for motivation to wake up just as we have.Believe it or not it all started with the wall clock.


Believed by many to be one of the first alarm clocks is the “Nuremburg” clock of Germany.This clock was iron with a bronze bell and because of its inner workings had to mounted on the wall.A series of weights and pendulums were used to keep time and operate the alarm and needed the length of the wall to operate.Of course these clocks were the forefathers of the “grandfather clock” that we all surely know and love.

Another interesting chapter in the alarm clocks life came during World War II.During the war most civilian products were put aside in everyday factory production to make room for war production.The alarm clock was on this long list of products that needed to go for the time being.Alas the apathetic and unpunctual of the Greatest Generation came to its rescue though.During the war it became a rather common excuse to say that “my alarm clock is broken”!Indeed it seemed that these finely crafted timepieces were at the end of there service length as the war drew on.This led to a special permit for wartime alarm clock production!Perhaps one of the oddest moments in clock history.This only goes to show you the value of what we take as a right and pain in our every day lives.

After the war came the invention of two of the the modern alarm clocks greatest features.The always needed snooze button of course and the digital clock.The snooze button alarm clock was invented in the nineteen fifties and was present on early General Electric clocks.This ushered in a new age of procrastinators that found they could even wait just five more minutes to sleep(the authors humble opinion of course!).

Nowadays alarm clocks come in many forms and functions.They are available in versions that will shoot the display on the ceiling and even in clocks that show no time.They can be programmed to sing a song,pierce the air with a siren,or just flash a light.Indeed if there was ever an era to oversleep now is not the time!