(Since my alarm clock was a gift and not an heirloom the history of ownership is limited to me.)

As a continuation of last week’s blog post, I decided to look more into the history of alarm clocks. Interestingly enough, there is some dispute on who created the first alarm clock. My last post mentioned an American as the first person to patent an alarm clock. However, I am reading conflicting stories about the first alarm clock originating from Ancient Greece. (Why does it seem like everything was created when the Ancient Greeks walked the earth?) Some of these sources claim that the first alarm clock was created nearly 2,000 years ago. I am careful not to mention these sources because I do not find them to be credible enough after doing some research on the supposed inventor of the first alarm clock, Ctesibius. I realize that these conflicting speculations on the creation of the first alarm clock speaks to a much bigger issue than alarm clocks itself. It reveals the issue of ownership, entitlement and cultural dominance. The issue of ownership is hard to determine in many cases because objects are always in constant motion from place to place or person to person. Then there is the issue of entitlement that somewhat overlaps with ownership. Being entitled to an object does not necessarily mean ownership of that particular object. By cultural domination, I am referring to the fact that because the world is Eurocentric we often trace inventions back to Ancient Greece/Rome and mostly in European nations.  I bring up these issues because clearly in the case of the invention of the alarm clock these are issues we are forced to stop and think about because of the disputing claims we are presented with. Then we also have to take into consideration the possible invention of an alarm clock during the Nok Civilization in present day Nigeria, for example.

As I stated in my last post, I am curious to know about how people who needed to wake up early woke up. Luckily for me, as I was reading an article about the 2,000-year history of alarm clocks I came across the term “knocker-upper.” Indeed, I was just as puzzled as you probably are right now. Apparently, knocker-uppers were people who were hired in Ireland and in Britain to wake people up. This trade started during the Industrial Revolution and continued through the 1950’s because alarm clocks were not as cheap or as reliable then as they are now. Sometimes these jobs were carried out by older men and women and constables making patrols early in the morning*. It is unfathomable for me to even think of being a knocker-upper as a real job. I find it funny to think of, but I also find it profoundly fascinating. To think that there was period of time when people hired other people to wake up for them leaves me speechless. However, it also makes me question how those knocker-uppers woke themselves up. It could be argued that these people had become so used to waking up early in the morning that their circadian rhythm changed accordingly. As of now, I cannot think of anything free of tangled questions that could answer this question.

*All this information was gather from Wikipedia.