My cat was the worst at this for 15 years. Then I realized I was the problem all along. I simply stopped feeding her in the mornings and within a month she stopped expecting it in the morning and thus, doesn't wake me up anymore. Should have done that years ago. :-) -Daven
Have you heard of a closed door? My cat gets fed when I get up. She does not get to dictate to me when that is because she's not allowed in my bedroom when I'm asleep.
@@TodayIFoundOut Maybe I'll when I retire I'll follow suit, but for now I'm deliberately taking advantage of her aid in getting me up. I sleep through most other alarms.
Great comment. I was thinking the same thing. Just answer the damn question instead of giving us a protracted history of how people understand time. The question simply asked how people could keep a schedule without a device waking them up in the morning.
Because interrupting the REM phase is bad for you. So your internal clock synced up with your alarm clock to avoid geting shocked out of REM. Be glad for it.
You get synced up. I work all different kinds of shifts and so I often have different wake up times. I regularly wake up 2 minutes before the alarm. I like it
You may not actually wake up, you could be in a very light sleep phase. Then the interruption by the alarm clock would just prevent those last 10 seconds from being forgotten like the hour before.
"Wet-dog-nose-in-face" is my first call to rise, if I manage to "snooz" off the first attempt he comes back with the much more stern and effective "paw-in-groin/bladder". I have yet to experience a third level
And if you have more than one dog sleeping on the bed, the wake up call is: "Time to rumble" 🐕 woof-woof. And if you don't wake up then, you get trampled in the stampede. And you may also have to clean up pee stains on the blanket, depending on how desperate they are to go.
As a kid I asked my grandfather who grew up in the early 20th century how he woke up on time. They paid a knocker-up who in turn went by the church clock. This man was also the lamp lighter and security guard of sorts of the neighborhood. I believe he worked exclusively in the night shift.
They likely used words completely unrelated to clocks. Clocks existed before modern English was created. By which time the direction a clock moved was relatable en masse
@@KNR90 Makes a lot of sense. I've since learned that they had terms like "sunwise". Was quite surprised to learn "Widdershins" was one of them, meaning "anti-clockwise". It comes from old German, but I'd heard of it from Pratchett's Discworld novels.
LOL, "morning" according to morons who think noon is "morning," then, instead of midnight being the start of it. -- It was a joke. Oh, well then keep working on it until it actually makes sense enough to be _funny_ as something that's a true joke is.
I haven't used an alarm clock since I started living with a cat. She has an amazing sense of when it is time to get her some breakfast and starts nudging me awake.
I just assumed that the common folk would start their day when the sun rose and those who had really nothing to do (I'm looking at you nobility!) would get out of bed when they felt like it.
@@rachelmoody1520 I figured that sleeping inside would be implicit in my previous comment, and windows were a luxury back then, most houses just had holes in the walls for light that were shuttered at night. Kinda hard to open the shutters to let the sun hit your face before you've woken up
@@PixelOverload for most people (I'd say), sleeping with the blinds up (is this how you say it?) wakes them up sort of early. I, for one, don't exactly wake up the sun rises but I still wake up early.
Bonus Fact: before artificial lighting became common people would sleep in two distinct periods, often waking up in the night for about an hour and then returning to bed. This has even been observed in modern times. If you cut out all artificial lighting in your home after sunset, you're likely I'm time to slip into two distinct sleep periods.
-There's an old saying regarding an exhausting/tedious person: "Ask him what time it is and he tells you how the watch was made"!!! I guess Simon is that man. ☺ -Yeah, roosters don't really work. Damn things crow all night long. Nearly every freakin' hour!
well i suppose it works like this: Rooster crows, you wake up, see if it's light already, and if not, you stay in bed, otherwise you get up. kinda like the pee method.
@@silkwesir1444 Problem with that is a rooster crows nearly every hour on the hour whereas you only get up to pee every hour on the hour if you over 50. Sucks for kids. ☺
I saw an antique alarm clock consisting of a candle with numbers going down the candle stalk. One simply inserted the candle rectally to the correct number of hours, lit the candle, and then went to sleep. This method does not include a 'snooze' option.
You will. I suddenly obtained one after I broke my ankle and had to be at physio at 9 every single day. That was the start. Now I don't use an alarm clock and rarely wake up later than 7:30 no matter when I went to bed (well, going to bed at 2 at the latest and rarely enough to survive). Having a cat helps too, but I keep waking up at the same time or even earlier when I'm on vacation, I'm better rested then I guess.
@Mango wishes Sounds like the sunlight cues line up for you around 7 AM and 9 PM for your location within your timezone. That's a common problem with the timezones shifted so far west from the ideal around 6 AM sunrise / 6 PM sunset near Spring / Fall equinox.
Idk how common it is but I can wake up whenever I want without a clock. Say it's the night before, I'll just tell myself to wake up at 6 and then at like 5 :55 I'll wake up. This works with or without a clock for back up. I've tested it
@@PatRiot- Not knowing the definition of a basic human function doesn't mean that it doesn't affect nearly all of us in a very regular way. You're probably correct tho. A lot of people don't know the word.
Most of the human population have a 25 hour circadian rhythm. So most people would not be waking up at the same time if they relied solely upon it. Having said that, some people have conditions that give them a longer or shorter one so they instinctively sleep longer or shorter to just enough energy / relaxation / whatever the fuck sleep is needed for. Then there's those that can power nap intermittently and feel refreshed enough to carry on.
@@alephnulI Yes, I've read that about blind people. It makes sense considering the function is closely linked to the lack or presence of light in the retina, a process lacking in many blind people.
Great point. He described how people created clocks and managed to track hours but not exactly what methods were used to wake people up BEFORE such technology existed.
I had a hard time tracking solar time with my eye only, everytime I have to rely on makeshift sundial, somehow my eye always tell me a time thats one or two hour off. Just wondering whether you got any trick? Biohack? Whatever? Coz I forgot to charge my phone and stuck in hiking way too bloody many time.
biggus dickus I expect your missus, Incontinentia, often gives you a warm wet awakening most mornings. Difficult to sleep when someone pees next to you in your bed.
I'm 30 and i've never needed an alarm, even as a child. Usually i wake up an hour or two before i need to and just keep taking short naps and checking the time.
...I thought this video was about how to get up without a clock...yet it is about the history of clocks and keeping appointments without a clock. So just in case someone actually want's to know how people got up without alam clocks: pretty simple: The daylight woke them up on a daily rythm, if you keep that rythm long enough your inner clock will simply wake you up again and again near the same time. I for example wake up exactly 5 minutes before my alarm goes off. Almost to the second precise at the same time every day. Unfortunatelly also on weekends XD. The mentioned methods of listening to church bells, drinking water or using sun dials, is more or less cheating, because that IS a form of alarm clock. @Simon: The sun is shining it is spring - go on vacation.
Mr Train asks: Can you do a segment about Simon Whistler in which Simon Whistler talks about himself as if he doesn't know himself but has to present himself to others and state facts and interesting things about himself?
Sure if you mean 6pm.........tomorrow I told my daughter she was lazy because she played too many video games, so she stopped. Now she watches Pewdiepie play them for her.
watching at 4.50am for no good reason. insomnia and Simon. these days i save the videos for this express purpose. a little science is always a comfort.
They say the sun is like a spotlight shining down at earth, moving across the sky. If you take a flashlight and move it across a piece of paper with stuff on it, you'll see that shadows at the top move clockwise and shadows near the bottom move counterclockwise.
There is also the candle method. Candles of equal thickness that were marked in regular segments so you know how much time had passed when the candle had burned down to the next marker. Also if I remember correctly monks also used waterclocks that released a whistleing sound when emptied... as long as the clock didn't freeze in winter.
Interesting. Love the research. No mentioned of the Circadian clock... I tend not to keep to regular day time hours, although I do try. I go to bed when I am tired and I wake up after 6 hours of sleep. This usually means I am up for 18 hours and sleeping for 6 but sometimes when I am up for between 20 to 22 hours before I crash, I may still sleep for 6 hours, or, like today. I sleep for 8 hours. No alarm clocks. There are times when I am sleeping during the day and am up all night. Naturally and sadly we have missed some doctors appointments, but we just reschedule and continue on. We dont currently hold any jobs because we are retired.
I remember reading a Steve Pavlina article saying you could mentally rehearse waking up at a certain time and your subconscious will obey and wake you up if your command was clear enough. You have to envision the time you want to get up, and literally rehearse several times the night before it from your bed like "oh! it's 7:00 am, time to open my eyes, sit up and stretch!" Anyway long story short it totally works and also explains why you sometimes wake up 10 seconds before your alarm.
Waiting for church bells or someone to knock on your door🤔 Isnt that the chicken or egg dilemma?? How did THESE people get up to ring the bells or knock on doors??
It is a chicken egg issue assuming everyone slept at the same time. They didnt. There was night watchmen. Or patrolman. The lamp lighters. The butcher's (used to work at night to slaughter and prepare) and so many other jobs we juat don't even consider need doing Any more because of automation and shift work.
In that sort of infrastructure (whether it’s military, church, city watch, or even a large enough private residence) you likely had an overnight labor force even if is simply a door guard or porter that would have standing orders to begin the waking up process based on some sort of observation (celestial sightings or predawn twilight) before mechanical clocks you would have water clocks that were simple based on the flow of water out of a fixed opening (essentially an hour glass without glass or sand) But if you lived on the outskirts in some freehold farm, or part of some military patrol, you woke up when the sun woke you up, or the increase of animal noise in response to the sun woke you, or someone bigger than you kicked you awake after they woke up
In some cases, people like religious monks had figured out how to create candles that always took the same amount of time to burn a certain distance. There would always be someone in the monk’s order who would be awake, even during the middle of the night, (or they were supposed to stay awake to be praying,) who would wake the next person when the candle(s) had burned to when their “praying shift” or “on-watch shift” was supposed to end. When it was time for everyone else to wake-up in the morning, whoever was the current person “on-watch“ would likely be the one to ring the bells.
The full bladder method got me through boot camp! I used to chug right before bed and wake up around 3-3:30am, take my sweet time getting dressed, brushing my teeth, and washing my face before putting my uniform on under my sweats and by the time it was time to wake up I was good to go and never had to fight over the 5 sinks for 40 people to get ready in 15 minutes
@Andro mache I know all of that. I just happen to like Simon. If I really want to know about something, I research it myself. Simon is like ear candy for me ❤️
I always wake up before the alarm clock goes off. Simple technique: 1) Look at your watch before you go to bed and imprint that image in your memory (see it with closed yes); 2) Tell yourself: I want to wake up at XX:XX time and also imprint that image in your mind. Note: I usually imagine the hands of a clock moving from current time and stopping at the time I want to wake up. It works everytime. You may need some practice but I learned the vivid image and command in your mind will get the job done.
The simple answer: circadian rhythms. One point: technically, twilight does not occur at both ends of the night as stated in the video. Twilight occurs between day and night; aurora occurs between night and day (I’m waiting for somebody to make a Sleeping Beauty comment, lol).
Circadian rhythms yes, but a large part of the population have "night owl" Circadian rhythms, and no matter how used they get to their schedules, their genes will always revert back to try and wake them up later.
For two years I didn't have a schedule to keep and no need for alarms, I ended up with a sleeping pattern of 30 hours awake and 10 hours asleep each cycle. Without alarm clocks I start sliding back into this rhythm, in my old job I'd regularly wake up for work, go to work, stay up all day then go to work again and finally go to sleep when I got home without feeling exhausted and fatigued. Just normal level of sleepy. My record for hours awake is also 107 hours, I still regularly do 50 hour sessions of awakeness, if I don't force myself to sleep it just doesn't come to me easily.
In the small town I was raised in, there was a whistle at a wood mill. They kept everyone informed. We honestly didn't need a clock because the whistle kept everyone straight.
Bonus fact: An easy way to roughly tell how much longer until sundown, or how long since sunup, is to extend your hand out with your palm facing you. Each finger width is roughly 15 minutes so multiply however many fingers fit between the sun and the horizon by 15.
When I was eleven my middle sister got married and mother's work schedule was changed. I was told it was now my job to make sure my elder brother was up for secondary school. I had no alarm clock only the fear of a belt on my hindquarters. After I gave up and started yanking the covers off his bed, he soon bought a door lock and an alarm clock of his own.
I lived without electricity for three months once many,many years ago. I found myself going to sleep around 8 pm and waking around 5 am without fail. After that I came to believe that without electricity or unnatural lighting such as electric,gas,kerosene or maybe even a natural fire. One will sleep and wake naturally at dusk till pre dawn. All other times in my life even now I am a terrible insomniac !
My mother lived in a very poor household as a child (1920's). They did not have a clock. They told the time by thistles on the stream train leaving the nearby railway station. The trains ran more or less on time and they blew their whistle before starting. They left home to go school on the second northbound train. On Sunday there were no trains so it made going to Church difficult, so they were often very early in the summer and later in the winter.
Seriously though, Simon. I'm rarely a fan of the "more is more" philosophy of content generation, but this episode had a rapid-fire of fascinating facts I'd never even considered. Maybe I'm biased from the braingasm, and maybe it's a unique situation because of the content itself, but if you could find a pattern to emulate in this episode (with regards to your writing workflow) that would be a significant discovery. 1) In all my years as a history nerd, I'd never once run across the anecdote about the 36 (and eventually 24) stars. It was immediately familiar and shocking. Gave me chills. 2) The recent usage of 60 as a division in time? Whoa. Immediately explained all of the various terms you read about in classical literature to describe "the time of day". Then you expanded on it. Bravo.
A rudementary alarm clock used in some places was a nail melted into the side of a lit candle, the candle was then placed in a metal dish. After a time the wax would melt away, freeing the nail to clang to the dish. Effectively alerting a person to the passage if time.
My great grandfather was the last "Knocker-Upper " in the city of Dundee, Scotland. We know this from the discovery of an old newspaper article about him found in my grandfather's possessions after his death.
Here’s how people without alarm clocks used to wake up. You are a real man and have yo do your work. You get up early because the farm isint going to work itself
That's all very well if you live nearer the equator but in the far north it would mean bearley going to bed at all in the summer, and spending most of the winter in bed.
I haven't owned an alarm clock in over 40 years. I'm a very sound sleeper and never found one that could wake me. I just tell myself before going to sleep what time I need to wake up, and I always wake up usually about 15 minutes before that time.
My youngest daughter figured it out when she had to get up for school. She waited until her older sister got up.🤣 The younger sister refused to learn about time until she got a job. Only then did she learn to tell time around 16 years old.
Also, the human body can wake it'self up on it's own with practice. It's an old hunters trick, and can in my case at least, be as precise as to the nearest half hour. It's mentioned often in older literature, but seems to be a lost art nowadays.
Some people even used candles that burned for a certain amount of time, placed on a metal plate and stuck a nail into the candle at the approximate time they needed to be awake. The candle would burn to that point and then drop the nail causing such a noise to rouse whoever needed to be up
@@johnnyslokes2712 The idea is that most people will fall asleep then wake up a fairly predictable amount of time later, such as 8 hours. If you regularly go to sleep at 8 PM, you'll tend to wake up at 4ish AM. Not everyone has an 8 hour sleep cycle, but those people just need to get to bed a bit earlier or later for the same effect. I have no such luck. I spend the first 3 to 5 hours tossing and turning, then finally start sleeping well about the time the alarm goes off. The only way I could regularly do this without an alarm clock would be to spend like 12 hours in bed every day. People like me would need to rely on others with better internal clocks to wake us up. In modern life, we often stay up until 10 or 11 PM then get up at 4 AM, which is much harder to do without an alarm clock (though I've met a few people who naturally only sleep 3 or 4 hours a night). So our perception that waking up is hard is based on this habit of not getting "enough" sleep for our body's internal clock.
One time my husband told me when he was in the army about how they made sure they got up with out an alarm clock would be drinking a full canteen of water. This way they would wake in 6 hours after they slept, to relieve themselves with out using a noisy time clock. Guess it was a good way to wake up, with out letting any unfriendly individuals know your location.
I've never personally been awakened by a rooster. But I once did work along a railroad out on the countryside. We parked our car in this one location at about 7:00am and started walking from there. Where our car was parked there was a rooster crowing. I thought that was so cool, first time I heard that in real life. Returned to the car to advance it further along the route. It was around 10am, damn rooster was still crowing! If I ever found myself without an alarm clock at my convenience, I now know, I won't be getting a rooster.
Prior to the use of mechanical clocks many people, mostly churches, was the use of candles that burned at a set rate with marks on their side to indicate an hour of use. This allowed monasteries and the like to have prayers on time.
Growing up in the 60’s we spent most of our time outside if we weren’t in school. Although we sometimes wore watches, we also just knew what time it was by watching the sun.
But what about all the work that starts before the sun rises? Many jobs have to be done 1-2 hours before the sun comes up. So it’s not quite as simple as waking up with the sun.
I grew up in a small tropical town in South America. * Rooster will drive u crazy in the morning. * Crazy amounts of birds will make noise early morning. * Church will ring bells * If u had farmers or bakers in your family they would be awake automatically somehow. * Old people wake up early to go to the bathroom (hopefully they wake up) * At 9am it was really hot (No AC) so if you stayed in your bed you may be cooked Alive.
Also, a person's circadian rhythms are regular enough to keep a reasonable schedule. If you wake up around the same time every day, you'll usually keep doing so unless something in the schedule changes (going to bed later or being woken up earlier). Even then, it takes a few days for your body to adjust. It's not a super precise method of waking up, but it gets the job done so long as you keep to your schedule.
It’s not difficult to train yourself to wake up anytime. When I was younger, I started paying attention to what time it was as the sun moved. Also which direction I was facing. Once you get used to doing that, you’re always aware of it subconsciously. I could, and anyone can tell themselves to wake at a certain time, within five minutes. It’s like awakening and knowing if anyone else is home, or if the house is empty. I got started with the time thing after reading a novel about a boy going blind, and learning to pay attention to his other senses.I think we’ve always known these things, just forgot about them.
Cats. It still works. There's no snooze button on cat that wants breakfast.
Not as reliable if a mouse accidentally feeds your cat itself right before breakfast time.
My cat was the worst at this for 15 years. Then I realized I was the problem all along. I simply stopped feeding her in the mornings and within a month she stopped expecting it in the morning and thus, doesn't wake me up anymore. Should have done that years ago. :-) -Daven
Have you heard of a closed door? My cat gets fed when I get up. She does not get to dictate to me when that is because she's not allowed in my bedroom when I'm asleep.
@@geoffrogers7590 Have you heard of humor?
@@TodayIFoundOut Maybe I'll when I retire I'll follow suit, but for now I'm deliberately taking advantage of her aid in getting me up. I sleep through most other alarms.
How did people wake up before the alarm clock?
Eventually
When I'm damn good and ready. Now get off my lawn you kids !
Yes! HI-OOOOOOOOOO!
Great comment. I was thinking the same thing. Just answer the damn question instead of giving us a protracted history of how people understand time. The question simply asked how people could keep a schedule without a device waking them up in the morning.
how did people wake up? they had someone do it for them. ... ... how did that person know when to wake up?!?
@@magusisrafael he drank a lot of water before bed
a better question is: WHY DO I KEEP WAKING UP 10 SECONDS BEFORE THE ALARM GOES OFF?!
That's a good one
Routine and circadian rhythms
Because interrupting the REM phase is bad for you. So your internal clock synced up with your alarm clock to avoid geting shocked out of REM. Be glad for it.
You get synced up. I work all different kinds of shifts and so I often have different wake up times. I regularly wake up 2 minutes before the alarm. I like it
You may not actually wake up, you could be in a very light sleep phase. Then the interruption by the alarm clock would just prevent those last 10 seconds from being forgotten like the hour before.
This video should be called A Brief History of Timekeeping.
Because... Stephen Hawking?
Because the video is almost over before he gets around to the title issue about waking up in the morning.
Best comment ever!
I think Thoughty2 made something like that. Or more like "What is Time?"?
Can't remember, but it was interesting.
People opens their windows and say bonjour and then they start singing
Exaflare Bahamut 😂😂😂
And then song birds would come along and help them get dressed.
That's only in the poor provinces though.
Exaflare Bahamut definitely in Paris 👍
In Russia the windows open people and say privet
"Wet-dog-nose-in-face" is my first call to rise, if I manage to "snooz" off the first attempt he comes back with the much more stern and effective "paw-in-groin/bladder". I have yet to experience a third level
Third level is jump on your chest and toungue up the tip of your nose... No need for a fourth level after that!
Had a cat whose third level was a paw lightly placed on my eyelid.
And if you have more than one dog sleeping on the bed, the wake up call is: "Time to rumble" 🐕 woof-woof.
And if you don't wake up then, you get trampled in the stampede. And you may also have to clean up pee stains on the blanket, depending on how desperate they are to go.
As a kid I asked my grandfather who grew up in the early 20th century how he woke up on time. They paid a knocker-up who in turn went by the church clock. This man was also the lamp lighter and security guard of sorts of the neighborhood. I believe he worked exclusively in the night shift.
Now I want to know what "clockwise" and "anti-clockwise" were called before clocks.
🤔 Nice one 👍
They likely used words completely unrelated to clocks. Clocks existed before modern English was created. By which time the direction a clock moved was relatable en masse
@@KNR90 Makes a lot of sense. I've since learned that they had terms like "sunwise". Was quite surprised to learn "Widdershins" was one of them, meaning "anti-clockwise". It comes from old German, but I'd heard of it from Pratchett's Discworld novels.
@@whoshotdk I've seen widdershins in those novels but thought he might have made it up.
Anti clockwise? You mean counter-clockwise
My neighbor: **slam his door*
Me: *It's morning already*
Slam their fucking face and fix them a few days in hospital so you can sleep well.
reggiep75 Jesus chill out reg
reggiep75. Reggie Kray perchance?
I can't because it takes three alarms to wake me.
@@reggiep75 yeah you can sleep well in a cell for a few months
“Now for a bonus fact”
I thought 90% of this video was bonus facts
AM - Almost Morning (go back to sleep....ZZzzzzzz)
PM - Past Morning (you're fired...go back to sleep...ZZzzzzzzz)
ThAt'S nOt AcTuAlLy WhAt ThEy StAnD fOr
Mike Bennett 😂🍻
@@Lucy-pt8kn
Oh...for certain...that is ABSOLUTELY what AM and PM stand for...I know because some guy told me so. 😏
LOL, "morning" according to morons who think noon is "morning," then, instead of midnight being the start of it.
-- It was a joke.
Oh, well then keep working on it until it actually makes sense enough to be _funny_ as something that's a true joke is.
@@HelloKittyFanMan.
🤪ROFL
I haven't used an alarm clock since I started living with a cat. She has an amazing sense of when it is time to get her some breakfast and starts nudging me awake.
I just assumed that the common folk would start their day when the sun rose and those who had really nothing to do (I'm looking at you nobility!) would get out of bed when they felt like it.
Sure, but the problem is how to know when the sun's risen if you're asleep
@@PixelOverload Most people tend to wake up when the sun start's shining in their face.
@@rachelmoody1520 I figured that sleeping inside would be implicit in my previous comment, and windows were a luxury back then, most houses just had holes in the walls for light that were shuttered at night. Kinda hard to open the shutters to let the sun hit your face before you've woken up
@@PixelOverload for most people (I'd say), sleeping with the blinds up (is this how you say it?) wakes them up sort of early. I, for one, don't exactly wake up the sun rises but I still wake up early.
@@PixelOverload good point
Bonus Fact: before artificial lighting became common people would sleep in two distinct periods, often waking up in the night for about an hour and then returning to bed. This has even been observed in modern times. If you cut out all artificial lighting in your home after sunset, you're likely I'm time to slip into two distinct sleep periods.
-There's an old saying regarding an exhausting/tedious person: "Ask him what time it is and he tells you how the watch was made"!!! I guess Simon is that man. ☺
-Yeah, roosters don't really work. Damn things crow all night long. Nearly every freakin' hour!
I noticed that about roosters too.
well i suppose it works like this: Rooster crows, you wake up, see if it's light already, and if not, you stay in bed, otherwise you get up. kinda like the pee method.
@@silkwesir1444 Problem with that is a rooster crows nearly every hour on the hour whereas you only get up to pee every hour on the hour if you over 50. Sucks for kids. ☺
Your rooster must be broken, lol. Mine definitely only crows in the morning. 🐓🌄
myplane150 So your rooster is more of a coo-coo clock than an alarm clock.
"Sorry I'm late boss, my knocker upper didn't come."
"Yeah yeah, likely story. Now get to work."
"Oh look, the sun is up. Time to get up and open shop."
"Oh hey, the sun went down and everyone went home, time to go to bed."
Day 35 and my shift is half over... This method sucks in the land of the midnight sun.
That's why it was direction-based up north.
"slumber of sleep"
Ah yes, I love my slumber of sleep, just like I love my timber of wood and canine of dog.
😆😆😆 came looking to see who noticed this in the comments section!
My favourite canines are made of dog!
Don't forget cuisine of food, it's the second best object of things
Correct term is “timber of lumber”
My favourite are the Deutschen of Germans xD
I saw an antique alarm clock consisting of a candle with numbers going down the candle stalk.
One simply inserted the candle rectally to the correct number of hours, lit the candle, and then went to sleep.
This method does not include a 'snooze' option.
Oh the snooze is there. Its permanent. You fall asleep in a burning house towards a fiery death. That's snoozing.
this acually sounds like something people would use in the olden day.
ROFL
candles actually were used to mark time--just not rectally lmao
@@theenzoferrari458 Sounds cozy. I miss the good ol' days.
I love the idea of pointing at the sky and saying "you wanna meet around *gestures* here-ish?"
From the thumbnail, I thought it was going to explain how people wake up before an alarm clock rings.
Guess that remains a mystery for me.
You've got an internal clock to thank for that.
@@Leikeze I don't...
You will. I suddenly obtained one after I broke my ankle and had to be at physio at 9 every single day. That was the start. Now I don't use an alarm clock and rarely wake up later than 7:30 no matter when I went to bed (well, going to bed at 2 at the latest and rarely enough to survive). Having a cat helps too, but I keep waking up at the same time or even earlier when I'm on vacation, I'm better rested then I guess.
@Mango wishes no, the sun is off by two hours. How dares it.
@Mango wishes Sounds like the sunlight cues line up for you around 7 AM and 9 PM for your location within your timezone. That's a common problem with the timezones shifted so far west from the ideal around 6 AM sunrise / 6 PM sunset near Spring / Fall equinox.
That damn rooster starts at 3 am every day, EVERY DAY!!!
Idk how common it is but I can wake up whenever I want without a clock. Say it's the night before, I'll just tell myself to wake up at 6 and then at like 5 :55 I'll wake up. This works with or without a clock for back up. I've tested it
I have done that(when I was young),but I had to repeat it in my head a few times throughout the day.
Yeh i can set a time to wake up in my head an 99/100 it works giv or take 10 min
So maybe this is how most our ancestors got up. Seems like with the right mind set and maybe a bit of sunlight, most people could get up on their own.
How about the town crier? “6 O’CLOCK AND ALL IS WELL!”...
"THE TIME IS....VERY LATE"
drummerglenchin 😂
“Wakey, wakey...it’s day breaky!”
Yo its 6am shut the eff up!
@@AF_1892 lol
Circadian rhythms are pretty powerful.
70% of viewers have absolutely no idea what the word circadian means
Nor the function of it
@@PatRiot-
Not knowing the definition of a basic human function doesn't mean that it doesn't affect nearly all of us in a very regular way.
You're probably correct tho. A lot of people don't know the word.
Mine doesn't work well, unfortunately. =(
The majority of blind people also have problems with their circadian rhythms.
Most of the human population have a 25 hour circadian rhythm. So most people would not be waking up at the same time if they relied solely upon it. Having said that, some people have conditions that give them a longer or shorter one so they instinctively sleep longer or shorter to just enough energy / relaxation / whatever the fuck sleep is needed for. Then there's those that can power nap intermittently and feel refreshed enough to carry on.
@@alephnulI
Yes, I've read that about blind people. It makes sense considering the function is closely linked to the lack or presence of light in the retina, a process lacking in many blind people.
You talked for 7 minutes without answering the initial question. You should be a politician.
Great point. He described how people created clocks and managed to track hours but not exactly what methods were used to wake people up BEFORE such technology existed.
Then you should check him out on visualpolitik
It was late, but he did say it. It was comunity bells, factory bells, solicitaors.. I mean door knockers..
He even talked about how we got clockwise which had nothing to do with the question.
@@theRealtensigh Ya, I noticed that too and ummm, frustrating.
when I lived in the woods for a few months, I got used to tracking the sun in the sky to keep track of time.
I had a hard time tracking solar time with my eye only, everytime I have to rely on makeshift sundial, somehow my eye always tell me a time thats one or two hour off. Just wondering whether you got any trick? Biohack? Whatever? Coz I forgot to charge my phone and stuck in hiking way too bloody many time.
biggus dickus I expect your missus, Incontinentia, often gives you a warm wet awakening most mornings. Difficult to sleep when someone pees next to you in your bed.
biggus dickus - you can tell the calendar by the decomposition of the bodies buried in shallow graves
That’s quite interesting. Didn’t know clocks don’t work in woods.
I'm 30 and i've never needed an alarm, even as a child. Usually i wake up an hour or two before i need to and just keep taking short naps and checking the time.
...I thought this video was about how to get up without a clock...yet it is about the history of clocks and keeping appointments without a clock.
So just in case someone actually want's to know how people got up without alam clocks: pretty simple: The daylight woke them up on a daily rythm, if you keep that rythm long enough your inner clock will simply wake you up again and again near the same time. I for example wake up exactly 5 minutes before my alarm goes off. Almost to the second precise at the same time every day. Unfortunatelly also on weekends XD.
The mentioned methods of listening to church bells, drinking water or using sun dials, is more or less cheating, because that IS a form of alarm clock.
@Simon: The sun is shining it is spring - go on vacation.
"Want is to know"? Huh, what?
That and the giant bell and the man banging a big stick on your window...
When I was younger I always thought that if they lived in the countryside a rooster would wake them up😂😂
Most of the time the rooster is several hours late in waking the farmer
"I need to pee", "must be 3AM"
3am? hmm. That makes you about 45 years old then?
By the time you get to be 60, the pee-clock rings every 3 hours.
@@marvinkitfox3386 nope, i got diabetes
Thats not bad, I have to pee exactly 30 minutes before the alarm goes off.
Mr Train asks: Can you do a segment about Simon Whistler in which Simon Whistler talks about himself as if he doesn't know himself but has to present himself to others and state facts and interesting things about himself?
So much want!
Teenagers just casually wake up at 6pm
Sure if you mean 6pm.........tomorrow
I told my daughter she was lazy because she played too many video games, so she stopped.
Now she watches Pewdiepie play them for her.
No, they don't! Only in summertime when the pool opens at 8 a.m.
Experience; my sister and I woke up at 7 a.m. To do just that.
It’s to be expected when they go to sleep at 6am.
When i was a teen i got up early. I was young and full of energy.
they only do that on weekends. Monday-Friday they can sleep through battle ships battling in their rooms.
watching at 4.50am for no good reason. insomnia and Simon. these days i save the videos for this express purpose. a little science is always a comfort.
Bathroom, hunger, children, roosters, and light. Alarm clock or not there is no way of escaping the morning.
Pets too ;-) .
So this is what my teacher tried to give us for like 3 month's.... you gave me more knowledge in 6 min of time, Thank you!
How do flat-earthers explain the sun dials shadow in different hemispheres?
Magic
they don't
They will say the sundial was a mythological technology, like Greek fire, or something.
They say the sun is like a spotlight shining down at earth, moving across the sky. If you take a flashlight and move it across a piece of paper with stuff on it, you'll see that shadows at the top move clockwise and shadows near the bottom move counterclockwise.
Timothy Tolle, thank you. Of course they do. 🤦♂️
Great answer!
Follow up question: when did we change from counting hours between sunrise to sunset to counting them between midnight and midday?
“How did people knew” is what the title reads. Just putting this comment here before they change it
Yep, we all witnessed it.
They meant before the invention of the alarm clock, smarty.
i knew it!
I was there!
@@FlamJongUn It's grammatically incorrect, smarty. It should read "How Did People Know" not "knew."
There is also the candle method. Candles of equal thickness that were marked in regular segments so you know how much time had passed when the candle had burned down to the next marker. Also if I remember correctly monks also used waterclocks that released a whistleing sound when emptied... as long as the clock didn't freeze in winter.
U didnt upload yesterday so I didn't find out anything and failed my exams
It sounds to me like we taught you a much more valuable lesson that day than we ever could have through a video posting. You're welcome. ;-) -Daven
Interesting. Love the research. No mentioned of the Circadian clock... I tend not to keep to regular day time hours, although I do try. I go to bed when I am tired and I wake up after 6 hours of sleep. This usually means I am up for 18 hours and sleeping for 6 but sometimes when I am up for between 20 to 22 hours before I crash, I may still sleep for 6 hours, or, like today. I sleep for 8 hours. No alarm clocks. There are times when I am sleeping during the day and am up all night. Naturally and sadly we have missed some doctors appointments, but we just reschedule and continue on. We dont currently hold any jobs because we are retired.
I have found that when I am more exposed to the elements the temperature changes and sunlight govern when I wake up and go to sleep.
Thanx Simon. "I'm so glad we had this time together".
You'd better mention _Window Knockers._
... Yeah, that used to be a job.
and window knocker knockers - who would wake up the knockers who would you up to go your job . . . . . .
Who got the window knockers up??
Window knocker getter-uppers??🤔
Then who would get THOSE people up??🤔
And around we go......
drtbag39 sorry, the whole company is late today because the window knocker slept in/was ill
Dbzlotrfan M probably the second shift would wake up the first shift. And do on
First job to be replaced by robots. What happened to the window knockers? They learned to code.
I remember reading a Steve Pavlina article saying you could mentally rehearse waking up at a certain time and your subconscious will obey and wake you up if your command was clear enough. You have to envision the time you want to get up, and literally rehearse several times the night before it from your bed like "oh! it's 7:00 am, time to open my eyes, sit up and stretch!" Anyway long story short it totally works and also explains why you sometimes wake up 10 seconds before your alarm.
Waiting for church bells or someone to knock on your door🤔
Isnt that the chicken or egg dilemma?? How did THESE people get up to ring the bells or knock on doors??
It is a chicken egg issue assuming everyone slept at the same time.
They didnt.
There was night watchmen. Or patrolman.
The lamp lighters. The butcher's (used to work at night to slaughter and prepare) and so many other jobs we juat don't even consider need doing Any more because of automation and shift work.
In that sort of infrastructure (whether it’s military, church, city watch, or even a large enough private residence) you likely had an overnight labor force even if is simply a door guard or porter that would have standing orders to begin the waking up process based on some sort of observation (celestial sightings or predawn twilight) before mechanical clocks you would have water clocks that were simple based on the flow of water out of a fixed opening (essentially an hour glass without glass or sand)
But if you lived on the outskirts in some freehold farm, or part of some military patrol, you woke up when the sun woke you up, or the increase of animal noise in response to the sun woke you, or someone bigger than you kicked you awake after they woke up
In some cases, people like religious monks had figured out how to create candles that always took the same amount of time to burn a certain distance. There would always be someone in the monk’s order who would be awake, even during the middle of the night, (or they were supposed to stay awake to be praying,) who would wake the next person when the candle(s) had burned to when their “praying shift” or “on-watch shift” was supposed to end. When it was time for everyone else to wake-up in the morning, whoever was the current person “on-watch“ would likely be the one to ring the bells.
@Ross Coe well who the hell laid the egg, then?
@@damenwhelan3236 Yea,I didnt think of that. There was the graveyard shift as well. That makes sense👍
The stick that the knocker up used often also had a hook to turn the municipal gas lamps off, knocker up was a common "side hustle" for a lamplighter
the rooster lol
The full bladder method got me through boot camp! I used to chug right before bed and wake up around 3-3:30am, take my sweet time getting dressed, brushing my teeth, and washing my face before putting my uniform on under my sweats and by the time it was time to wake up I was good to go and never had to fight over the 5 sinks for 40 people to get ready in 15 minutes
There's no such thing as too much Simon ❤️✌️
What if you have run out of Simon videos??
@@lalaithan 😱NOOOOOOOO!! I don't know how I'd survive 💀😆😆
@Andro mache I know all of that. I just happen to like Simon. If I really want to know about something, I research it myself. Simon is like ear candy for me ❤️
@Andro mache I was joking, to be honest.
Simon nimis
I always wake up before the alarm clock goes off. Simple technique: 1) Look at your watch before you go to bed and imprint that image in your memory (see it with closed yes); 2) Tell yourself: I want to wake up at XX:XX time and also imprint that image in your mind. Note: I usually imagine the hands of a clock moving from current time and stopping at the time I want to wake up. It works everytime. You may need some practice but I learned the vivid image and command in your mind will get the job done.
"How will they know when the bars close"
Jokes on you the taverns never closed if you had enough coin.
Eh oh and up he rises, erlay in da mornin!
Welcome to Miami
The simple answer: circadian rhythms.
One point: technically, twilight does not occur at both ends of the night as stated in the video. Twilight occurs between day and night; aurora occurs between night and day (I’m waiting for somebody to make a Sleeping Beauty comment, lol).
Circadian rhythms yes, but a large part of the population have "night owl" Circadian rhythms, and no matter how used they get to their schedules, their genes will always revert back to try and wake them up later.
havent used alarm clocks in years, if i go to sleep at the right time i usually wakes up just before 7am
Same here! I've never understood why one would need an alarm clock in the first place.
For two years I didn't have a schedule to keep and no need for alarms, I ended up with a sleeping pattern of 30 hours awake and 10 hours asleep each cycle.
Without alarm clocks I start sliding back into this rhythm, in my old job I'd regularly wake up for work, go to work, stay up all day then go to work again and finally go to sleep when I got home without feeling exhausted and fatigued. Just normal level of sleepy.
My record for hours awake is also 107 hours, I still regularly do 50 hour sessions of awakeness, if I don't force myself to sleep it just doesn't come to me easily.
I use it as a backup just in case I dont wake up in time
In the small town I was raised in, there was a whistle at a wood mill. They kept everyone informed. We honestly didn't need a clock because the whistle kept everyone straight.
On top of the factory, the local church also rang bells in the morning, lunch, evening (5), and at night (I think 9) .
6:11 And now u know the term she's got "knocked up" came from.. ;)
I haven't used an alarm clock in 3 years. I wake up between 5 and 6 a.m. fully awake and refreshed. It's awesome.
I don't use one now. I'm pretty aware of my sleep cycle.I just wake up, at 7am. Give or take 20 mins
Bonus fact: An easy way to roughly tell how much longer until sundown, or how long since sunup, is to extend your hand out with your palm facing you. Each finger width is roughly 15 minutes so multiply however many fingers fit between the sun and the horizon by 15.
I swear you’re the twin brother of Michael Stevens from Vsauce
When I was eleven my middle sister got married and mother's work schedule was changed. I was told it was now my job to make sure my elder brother was up for secondary school.
I had no alarm clock only the fear of a belt on my hindquarters.
After I gave up and started yanking the covers off his bed, he soon bought a door lock and an alarm clock of his own.
When I know I have something to do in the morning, my body always beats the alarm.
I lived without electricity for three months once many,many years ago.
I found myself going to sleep around 8 pm and waking around 5 am without fail. After that I came to believe that without electricity or unnatural lighting such as electric,gas,kerosene or maybe even a natural fire. One will sleep and wake naturally at dusk till pre dawn. All other times in my life even now I am a terrible insomniac !
It was far easier to use stars at night to track time in the past without the light pollution many of us who live in cities experience nowadays
The issue in Ireland is that often the Sun is a mythological creature supposed to be behind the ever present clouds
My mother lived in a very poor household as a child (1920's). They did not have a clock. They told the time by thistles on the stream train leaving the nearby railway station. The trains ran more or less on time and they blew their whistle before starting. They left home to go school on the second northbound train. On Sunday there were no trains so it made going to Church difficult, so they were often very early in the summer and later in the winter.
“How did people knew”
actually thats how they say it over there us americans have just been saying it wrong all this time
This episode was a cut above, and that's a high accomplishment; your standard operating procedure is already remarkable. 🔥🔥🔥
Seriously though, Simon. I'm rarely a fan of the "more is more" philosophy of content generation, but this episode had a rapid-fire of fascinating facts I'd never even considered.
Maybe I'm biased from the braingasm, and maybe it's a unique situation because of the content itself, but if you could find a pattern to emulate in this episode (with regards to your writing workflow) that would be a significant discovery.
1) In all my years as a history nerd, I'd never once run across the anecdote about the 36 (and eventually 24) stars. It was immediately familiar and shocking. Gave me chills.
2) The recent usage of 60 as a division in time? Whoa. Immediately explained all of the various terms you read about in classical literature to describe "the time of day". Then you expanded on it.
Bravo.
Birds. They start singing at 4 o'clock on mornings.
Errol Michael Phillips not in winter
@@eendjeeendje4342 Sorry. I'm from the tropics.
This makes a nice alarm clock app...
I'd literally never hear that.
A rudementary alarm clock used in some places was a nail melted into the side of a lit candle, the candle was then placed in a metal dish. After a time the wax would melt away, freeing the nail to clang to the dish. Effectively alerting a person to the passage if time.
"When it dark, I sleep.
When it light, I wake."
My great grandfather was the last "Knocker-Upper " in the city of Dundee, Scotland. We know this from the discovery of an old newspaper article about him found in my grandfather's possessions after his death.
But they did have alarms.....Roosters and church bells.
Here’s how people without alarm clocks used to wake up. You are a real man and have yo do your work. You get up early because the farm isint going to work itself
Without alarm clock, I would sleep 15
Hours straight.
That's all very well if you live nearer the equator but in the far north it would mean bearley going to bed at all in the summer, and spending most of the winter in bed.
I haven't owned an alarm clock in over 40 years. I'm a very sound sleeper and never found one that could wake me. I just tell myself before going to sleep what time I need to wake up, and I always wake up usually about 15 minutes before that time.
But who woke up the Knocker-Ups so they could wake up their clients??
The night watchmen probably. There's never a time when nobody is awake.
That will have to be the Knocker-Up-Knocker-Ups
My youngest daughter figured it out when she had to get up for school.
She waited until her older sister got up.🤣
The younger sister refused to learn about time until she got a job. Only then did she learn to tell time around 16 years old.
"How Did People Knew"?
You knew, they just knowed it... oh know...
Also, the human body can wake it'self up on it's own with practice.
It's an old hunters trick, and can in my case at least, be as precise as to the nearest half hour.
It's mentioned often in older literature, but seems to be a lost art nowadays.
it's still "knew"
they're not fixing it
Some people even used candles that burned for a certain amount of time, placed on a metal plate and stuck a nail into the candle at the approximate time they needed to be awake. The candle would burn to that point and then drop the nail causing such a noise to rouse whoever needed to be up
Have not watched the video, my prediction though is that instead of staying up late they went to bed at a reasonable time
That simple
Anthony Swiss particularly useful and simple in areas where night lasts 18 hours
Yeah but how are you actually going to wake up at the time you want?
@@johnnyslokes2712 The idea is that most people will fall asleep then wake up a fairly predictable amount of time later, such as 8 hours. If you regularly go to sleep at 8 PM, you'll tend to wake up at 4ish AM. Not everyone has an 8 hour sleep cycle, but those people just need to get to bed a bit earlier or later for the same effect.
I have no such luck. I spend the first 3 to 5 hours tossing and turning, then finally start sleeping well about the time the alarm goes off. The only way I could regularly do this without an alarm clock would be to spend like 12 hours in bed every day. People like me would need to rely on others with better internal clocks to wake us up.
In modern life, we often stay up until 10 or 11 PM then get up at 4 AM, which is much harder to do without an alarm clock (though I've met a few people who naturally only sleep 3 or 4 hours a night). So our perception that waking up is hard is based on this habit of not getting "enough" sleep for our body's internal clock.
One time my husband told me when he was in the army about how they made sure they got up with out an alarm clock would be drinking a full canteen of water. This way they would wake in 6 hours after they slept, to relieve themselves with out using a noisy time clock. Guess it was a good way to wake up, with out letting any unfriendly individuals know your location.
You make a typo on UA-cam and the grammar nazis come out in droves.
Stevie Wonder If you're Stevie Wonder how did you see it?
it doesn't bother me, i'm fluent in typonese. 😁
Those Spelling Gestapo people never miss a thing do they?...By the way, love your music Stevie...
What happened to you?? Where have you been??🤔
I've never personally been awakened by a rooster. But I once did work along a railroad out on the countryside. We parked our car in this one location at about 7:00am and started walking from there. Where our car was parked there was a rooster crowing. I thought that was so cool, first time I heard that in real life. Returned to the car to advance it further along the route. It was around 10am, damn rooster was still crowing! If I ever found myself without an alarm clock at my convenience, I now know, I won't be getting a rooster.
Any news on the podcast? I’ve been missing it.
Wow Simon! You got a quadriple word score for efficacious, proliferate, mercurial, and impetus. Special mention for the English use of expedient.
Know*
Today I found Out even big channels make mistakes sometimes lol ^_^
Yes, all humans are fallible. 😉
Prior to the use of mechanical clocks many people, mostly churches, was the use of candles that burned at a set rate with marks on their side to indicate an hour of use. This allowed monasteries and the like to have prayers on time.
Nice typo.
oof life
Growing up in the 60’s we spent most of our time outside if we weren’t in school. Although we sometimes wore watches, we also just knew what time it was by watching the sun.
oh I know this one - the knocker upers (mind. gutter. out)
Something tells me that the expression of getting "knocked up" is somehow related to this though.
I get the emails from this channel, good reading over my morning coffees and I have facts to bore people with all day!
How did people know when to get up (pre alarm clock)? The sun rose above the horizon. There you go. Mystery solved.
But what about all the work that starts before the sun rises? Many jobs have to be done 1-2 hours before the sun comes up. So it’s not quite as simple as waking up with the sun.
I grew up in a small tropical town in South America.
* Rooster will drive u crazy in the morning.
* Crazy amounts of birds will make noise early morning.
* Church will ring bells
* If u had farmers or bakers in your family they would be awake automatically somehow.
* Old people wake up early to go to the bathroom (hopefully they wake up)
* At 9am it was really hot (No AC) so if you stayed in your bed you may be cooked Alive.
Easy, they just used their phones.
Also, a person's circadian rhythms are regular enough to keep a reasonable schedule. If you wake up around the same time every day, you'll usually keep doing so unless something in the schedule changes (going to bed later or being woken up earlier). Even then, it takes a few days for your body to adjust. It's not a super precise method of waking up, but it gets the job done so long as you keep to your schedule.
It’s not difficult to train yourself to wake up anytime. When I was younger, I started paying attention to what time it was as the sun moved. Also which direction I was facing. Once you get used to doing that, you’re always aware of it subconsciously. I could, and anyone can tell themselves to wake at a certain time, within five minutes.
It’s like awakening and knowing if anyone else is home, or if the house is empty.
I got started with the time thing after reading a novel about a boy going blind, and learning to pay attention to his other senses.I think we’ve always known these things, just forgot about them.
Full blatter user over here. Useful when not at home, camping, not wanting to disturb the family with noisy alarm, etc