Telling the Time

Market Street on February 1 2025

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Counting Magpies or Crows

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When Everything was Local

I am part of a Facebook group dedicated to old post boxes, A visitor to Dublin was surprised to find this twin post box with one box for Dublin only and the other for everywhere else. This system was common when all the sorting was done in the local post office. This was a kind of pre sorting which made the job of the postmen easier.

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Time and Tide waits for no Man

by Mick O’Callaghan

Now that I am retired, I have time to look back and examine the development of clocks and time keeping 

I remember my granny’s house and the various shapes and makes of timepieces they owned and their cuckoo clock with its double cuckoo sound. I listened to their stories about how their parents told the time before the mass production of clocks began in America in the 1820s.and every family aspired to getting a clock. They spoke about getting up at sunrise and going to bed at sunset. They judged the time during the day by the height of the sun in the sky. In wintertime they just worked from dawn to dusk.

I remember during my school days we often cycled around the Dingle Peninsula. We visited Kilmalkedar Church, with the beautiful view of Dún Chaoin, to examine the early Christian Monastic sundial which was marked in 12 parts according to the monastic day. This was home to St Maoilcethair from the 7^th century and what a lovely picturesque peaceful setting he chose for his prayer base.

Later, we learned about people returning from The Crusades and bringing the significance of 60 with them which was the counting unit in Ancient Babylonia. We were told that was how the hour with its 60 minutes, and the 12-hour day came about. I gave the same information to my own students during my teaching years. Was it all true and accurate? I hope it was.

In 1656 a Dutch Scientist invented the pendulum clock which was a big development. As a result of this we had grandfather clocks with their deep resonant solemn sound. We also saw the development of other large scale wall clocks. 

Most of you have come across Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” and published in 1751. In it he has that lovely line “The curfew tolls the knell of parting day’. This was the time to put out the fire and go to bed. This was their clock. “Curfew” is a bell that rings at the end of the day, but a “knell” is a bell that rings when someone dies. So, it’s like the “parting day” is dying.

I encountered that knelling word again in college. We read the poem,” Mid Term break” by Seamus Heaney when he speaks about sitting in class counting bells knelling classes to a close. There is a certain solemnity about the word ‘knelling’ used in the context of the inevitability of death, as it is in those two poems. There is something funereal about the school bell knelling because Heaney’s brother had died, and he was waiting to be collected and brought home for the funeral.

In my father’s time we had clocks which had to be wound every day, and the alarm was set each night. There was always a very loud eerie ticking sound which filled the house. There was a problem because the clocks seemed to be too fast or too slow and there was no checking mechanism.

All that changed with the arrival of the Radio into our lives. The clock’s time was set correctly when the news came on at 8 o clock in the morning. That was our time to pack up and cycle to school.

Later in our lives we saw the introduction of the pocket watch which had a cover over the dial. This watch, as the name denotes, was kept in the pocket with a chain attached and when you asked the time it was ceremoniously withdrawn and duly returned to the safety and security of the pocket after the notification of the correct time.

Then of course the wristwatch appeared, and it was met with unanimous approval with all and sundry proudly displaying the timepiece on their wrists with a vast array of straps and bracelets.

There was however another force emerging that would change the world’s communication systems. I read recently what Mark R Sullivan, President of Pacific Telephone Corporation said in 1953. In the first development the telephone will be carried around by the individual, perhaps as we carry a watch. It probably will require no dial, and I think we will be able to see each other, if they want to, as they talk and who knows but they might translate material.

We have travelled a long journey in the last 71 year since Mark Sullivan’s prophetic vision.

Today’s generation rely totally on their phones for all communication and timing with every piece synchronised with Greenwich Mean Time and time is accurate to the last second. We can see each other, translate, send messages, scan and do a multiplicity of tasks which are major advances during my lifetime.

I remember getting the television in 1965 and the advances in TV systems has been phenomenal as is progress in smart phone and technology. Many people will remember the first bulky Motorola phone in 1973.

Then we had the Blackberry in 2000, iPhone in 2007and cameras in all phones in 2010

Now our phones are our timepieces, our health and fitness monitors, our wallets, while with AI and Augmented Reality and increased battery life or maybe wireless transmission the future looks like continuing to be interesting with lots of exciting developments in our communications world. 

It’s all Tik Tok and many other systems nowadays. Farewell to Tick Tock. 

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Carmel’s Photo

Miriam Hilliard and Ger Kenny.  School tour to Carrigafoyle Castle, May 1974.

Those were the days! Carmel turned over one of her photos and was reminded how far photography has come.

Once upon a time, you pressed the shutter and you hoped you had got what appeared in your viewfinder. There were no screen and no reviewing. When you had taken your 24 snaps, you handed your film into the pharmacy to be developed. A week later you came back to collect your prints.

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A Fact

Birds do not urinate.

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