The First Ever Alarm Clock Could Only Wake You At One Single Time

Before snooze buttons and phones, waking up on time was a genuinely clever bit of engineering.

You hit snooze this morning without a second thought, but for most of history, reliably waking up at a set hour was a serious problem people had to solve by hand.

One of the earliest personal alarm clocks could only ring at a single fixed time, offering none of the flexibility you take for granted. If you needed a different hour, you were simply out of luck.

Before mechanical alarms became common, some people relied on human knocker-uppers, who were paid to tap on bedroom windows with long poles to rouse workers for their shifts.

So the effortless buzz on your bedside table is the end point of a very long struggle. Waking up on time used to require gears, poles and, occasionally, a stranger at your window.