A CBT PUBLICATION

The Story
Of Time Nita Berry
 By Nita Berry-
Illustrated by B.G. Varma

Children's Book Trust, New Delhi

 The Story of Time won the Shankar's Award and
First Prize in the category Non-fiction/Information
in the Competition for Writers of Children's Books
organized by Children's Book Trust. Apart from
stories, the other works by the author, published
by CBT, are The Story of Writing, The Wonder of
Water, Rajendra Prasad and Vinayak Damodar
Savarkar in 'Remembering Our Leaders' series.

EDITED BY GEETA MENON AND SUDHA SANJEEV

Text typeset in 13/17 pt. Palatino

© by CBT 2001

Reprinted 2002, 2003, 2004 (twice).

ISBN 81-7011-891-3
Published by Children's Book Trust, Nehru House,
4 Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, New Delhi-110002 and
printed at its Indraprastha Press. Ph: 23316970-74
Fax: 23721090 e-mail: cbtnd@vsnl.com
Website: www.childrensbooktrust.com
The Riddle Of Time

Just suppose you could clamber aboard a

Time Machine and press the 'Forward' button.
Z...a...ap... Would you hurtle forward through
a blinding flash of days and nights, months
and years—even long centuries— perhaps, to
land into an alien world of the future...? A
world that will be a marvel of technology. And
then suppose you pushed the 'Reverse' button
and took a trip in the opposite direction— g
journeying into the dim recesses of the past.
You might just land right into your favourite
period of history...
Imagine a scene, set in ancient Macedonia.
A gleaming, black steed is resisting all efforts
to tame it. It rears wildly and throws every
rider to the ground—until a handsome, curly-
haired youth, who has been watching intently,
approaches it. He murmurs gently into its
ears, and turns the quivering creature to face

3
the sun, away from its moving shadow. This
has been disturbing the horse all along...
If you could re-enter the past, what a thrill
it would be to watch young Alexander tame
the splendid Bucephalus who would later
lead him to victory in all his battles! Or to see
for yourself the lavish Mughal court with its
'nine gems'. You might even travel further
back into the primitive world and wander
through dinosaur country, with a friendly
brachiosaurus, perhaps, for company!
Can man indeed travel through time? So far,
it is only in the pages of science fiction that he
has travelled at will into the past and the
future. Or, of course, in his dreams which can
take him into any period every night!
However, he has always dreamt of conquering
time which, more than ever before, rules our
lives with a firm hand, without ever seeming
to slow down.
Could you think of a world without time?
Imagine what it would be like not to have to
tumble out of bed to the shrill buzz of the
morning alarm and to hurry to catch the
school bus! To be able to play on endlessly
without being told that it was time to go home...
or to watch a late night, horror film without it
ever being bedtime!
It all sounds too good to be true, or even
practical for that matter, does it not? For
a world without time would probably be
a totally chaotic place to live in, where

4
everything happened all at once—a kind
of topsy-turvy land! Without time you
would be late for school or forget to go to bed
at night. You would either reach the cinema
too early or after the show is over. And how
embarrassing to arrive at your best friend's
birthday party after all the guests have left!
Without the steady ticking of our clocks,
nothing indeed would run smoothly
anywhere. Factory machines would work in
absolute disorder; and buses and trains would
run at all hours, instead of to a schedule.
On the other hand, life without time could
perhaps be a kind of timeless existence,
where nothing moved forward and existed in
a static state. It is difficult to imagine either
state, actually.
No doubt, you do know what time means to
you, because it is so very important. You
probably look at your watch or clock at least a
dozen times in a day. Yet, if you were asked to
explain 'time', you would most likely be too
perplexed to answer.
Time is a funny thing. It can mean different
things to different people. It is rather like the
story of the six blind men who felt the
elephant. Remember how each one gave his
own description of the animal! Similarly, if
you asked for a definition of time, you would
probably get a lot of varied answers.
For a physicist, time along with space makes
up the two basic building blocks of the
universe. A science fiction enthusiast probably
views time as the fourth dimension. A
biologist, on the other hand, will see time as
the internal rhythm of our bodies that keeps
us in harmony with nature. For the watch
manufacturer, time ticks away as accurately
as his timepieces. Time means money to the
busy businessman. As for the student taking
an examination, time is always running short!
What about when you are bored? Time just
does not seem to move on, then!
However, for some people time has no
meaning at all! The great French General,
Napoleon Bonaparte was a strict disciplin-
arian. He was a stickler, too, for time. Once he
invited some important generals over to
dinner. When the guests failed to arrive on
time, he sat down to eat a solitary meal. He
then asked his servants to clear the table and
put away the rest of the food. When the generals
arrived, they were surprised to find no dinner.
Napoleon calmly announced that dinner time
was over and it was now time to leave. It was
a bitter lesson on the value of time!
"So, what then is time?" You might well
ask, just as St. Augustine did as far back
as the fifth century A.D. He had gone on to
comment, "If no one asks me, I know what Napoleon Bonaparte
(1769-1821)
it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks
me, I do not know." This most familiar of
concepts used in organizing everyday
thought and action is also the most elusive!

7
It cannot be given any simple definition.
"We physicists work with time every day/'
the late Nobel laureate Richard Feynman
remarked once. "But do not ask me what it is.
It is just too difficult to think about!"
Modern physicists, mathematicians and
philosophers are determined not to let time
slip through their fingers, eager to probe its
many mysteries. They have been thinking
hard—what really is time? How did it begin?
Can it be reversed or even slowed down? After
all, who has not wished to turn back the clock
or calendar at some time—to redo a test
perhaps, or erase a mistake? Again, they have
wondered, could time be accelerated to move
'Fast Forward', rather like a video cassette?
When did the universe come into existence?
Will it expand forever and the galaxies fade
and disperse into an ultimate 'heat death'? Or
will it recollapse into nothing, so that our
descendants are doomed to share the fate of
an astronaut who falls into a 'black hole'? And
then, will time end? The questions are as
endless as they are puzzling.
Early man too probably realized that time
was passing, when he saw he lived in a world
of constant changes that time was passing.
Seasons came and went. Rocks crumbled into
dust. He watched buds bloom into beautiful
flowers and wither away. Little babies grew into
young men and women, before time made them
old and grey. He saw that nothing or nobody

8
lasted forever. Since those early days, man has
tried to measure the flow of time. In fact,
devising more and more accurate clocks and
calendars became one of his most prolonged,
intellectual pursuits. It was as if he could
understand time better by measuring it.
"We have given more attention to
measuring time than to anything in nature,"
remarked Gemot Winkler, Director of Time
Services at the U.S. Naval Observatory,
Washington D.C. "But time remains an
abstraction, a riddle..." Despite our mastery
of clocks and calendars, the nature of time itself
is still a mystery.
Time, as we see it, moves forward, somewhat
like the flow of a river. To us, it therefore implies
change in the physical sense. After all,
development, growth and ageing do take place
with time. Scientists who agree with this idea
of time are called 'relationists'.
However, some scientists feel that time
exists, independent of the physical universe.
They explain, it is rather like a container in
which the universe exists and change takes
place. It would have, therefore, existed even Albert Einstein
if the universe had not. Albert Einstein was (1879-1955)
one such scientist who believed in this
'absolutist' theory of time. Time began to be
seen as a dimension like height and width.
To make matters even more confusing, other
thinkers argue that time depends on the
existence of conscious beings, in the mind
alone. Without consciousness, there is no time!
So far, these differing lines of thought have
not come to a common conclusion on the
nature of time itself. Yet, whatever their
differences, the vast distances of space and
time have held all men spellbound.
Since the dawn of history, man has looked
up at the mighty universe and gasped in awe.
On a clear, starry night he must have been
fascinated by the millions of twinkling stars,
some bright even fiery, others a faint pinpoint.
What great secrets do they hold, you may
well wonder.
Many of these pinpoints of light are
thousand times larger than our earth. They are
giant suns, blazing balls of molten metal and
rocks, billions and trillions of miles from the
earth. It is their enormous distances from the
earth that make them appear tiny.
Small distances, such as the length and
breadth of this book, are measured in
centimetres or inches. Bigger distances are
measured in metres or feet, while still bigger
distances are measured in kilometres or miles.
However, sizes and distances in the universe
are too vast to be measured in terms of any of
these units. The stars of our galaxy whirl
together in space in a gigantic spiral, so vast
that ordinary words for describing hugeness
just cannot describe this. Even millions or
billions of miles would not be enough to
express these immense distances. We need an

10
altogether different unit for measuring them.
Scientists describe the size of the universe
by using a measurement known as a light year.
This means a distance so great that it would
take a beam of light a whole year to travel from
one point to another. To have an idea of the
immensity of this distance we must first
measure the speed of light.
Light travels at an enormous speed, faster
than anything else we know. It covers 1,86,000
miles per second. This means you would zoom
more than seven times around the world in
one second! It has a speed more than 5,00,000
times faster than the Concorde. Now calculate
how far light will travel in a year. The distance
will be about 58,80,000,000,000 miles. This
distance is called a light year. Time thus
becomes an essential unit for measuring the
great distances of space.
Scientists have calculated that the star
farthest from the earth, visible to the naked
eye, is more than eight million light years
away. And if we use powerful telescopes, we
can see stars even 1,000 times more distant
than this! Light from them takes over 8,000
million years to reach us. This means that
when you look at them, you are seeing them
as they were 8,000 million years ago! Some of
the stars you can see in the sky have, probably,
ceased to exist long, long ago.
Calculations show that our galaxy of stars
is 2,00,000 light years across. In other words,

11
it would take a beam of light 2,00,000 years to
travel right across the galaxy. It is easier to
think of it this way than to try and remember
the actual distance, which would be written
out as 1,200,000,000,000,000,000 miles! You
would lose count of the zeros! Thus it is simpler
to use the light year as a unit when dealing with
distances beyond our understanding.
How old is the universe? When we start
thinking about its origin and age, we run into
real trouble with time. Some scientists believe
that the universe came into existence at one
particular moment. They call this the 'Big
Bang', which happened a long, long time ago.
Others think that the universe had always
existed and will exist forever, that is, there is
no beginning and no end to time! It is difficult

Solar System
to grasp such an idea, either. However,
recently it has been broadly accepted that time
cannot be treated in isolation from space. The
union of space and time is now being seen as a
key to understanding the universe.
Man's recent experiments in space have
been successful in sending planetary probes
to some of our 'nearby' and more distant
neighbours in the solar system—remember,
when we say 'nearby' it is in space terms, and
is actually millions of miles away.
At the same time, physicists and
mathematicians are working hard to push the
boundaries of our understanding of the
universe, and to solve the riddle of time.
Looking ahead into time, therefore, becomes
an enthralling challenge.
 Time In Our Lives

75...74..T3...72 hours... The time bomb ticked

away inexorably, strapped tightly to
Dr. Cabaleiro's chest. It was timed to explode
in just 72 hours if a ransom of 10 million
pesetas (Rs. 12 lakhs) was not delivered by
4 p.m. the next day, at a lonely spot outside
Orense, Spain. Dr. Cabaleiro had become the
victim of a new type of kidnapping in Spain,
where a person is released to collect his own
ransom after a live bomb has been attached
to his body.
Dr. Cabaleiro was on the edge of panic. After
all, he was a walking time bomb! Wild
thoughts raced through his head. Perhaps
he should get away from people. 'I should head
for the mountains and just wait for this to
explode... No, that is madness. The kidnapper
was confident there would be no accidents...

14

jS?.
and, anyway, this bomb could be a fake...'
Only his family and two close friends knew
of his agony. The wily kidnappers had
threatened serious consequences to his family,
if the police were informed. Now, in less than
20 hours he would be blown to bits if he did
not find the money...
Fifteen hours to go! The hours seemed to be
slipping away as Dr. Cabaleiro's friends
urgently tried to make contact with eminent
Orense citizens to raise the ransom money
from different banks early the next morning.
It was a race against time!
It was now already noon with only four
hours to go for the deadline. At last, with a
15 kg brown suitcase of thousand-peseta notes
in his hand, the time bomb ticking loudly
against his chest, Dr. Cabaleiro drove 77 km
out of Orense, following directions. He
stumbled and panted 3 km through rocky
terrain, his heart beating painfully against the
bomb casing. The kidnappers had promised
to leave instructions on defusing the bomb
after receiving the ransom money.
Dr. Cabaleiro just could not locate the place
described on their hastily scrawled directions.
Frustrated, he returned home. Three hours
later, the kidnappers telephoned, with a more
accessible spot. By the wee hours of the
morning he had finally found the place, and
deposited the money in a bag left there by the
kidnappers. It was 12 hours past the deadline!
He looked around helplessly. There were no
instructions left anywhere on how to defuse
the bomb. It was all a terrible trick!
In desperation Dr. Cabaleiro contacted his
family. They had already informed the police.
He was to drive straight to Orense Police
Headquarters where a special bomb squad had
been flown in.
It took three hours for the bomb disposal
unit of the national police to detonate the
explosive. Seven kilos lighter, Dr. Cabaleiro
was in a state of shock as he stepped out of the
explosive ring of death, barely in the nick of
time. Later that day, the deadly bomb was
detonated by experts in an empty field, by
remote control. Fragments were blasted four
storeys high and 25 metres from the site.

16
 Time can thus become a crucial factor in a
life-death situation like this one, where it
almost ran out! Every minute becomes
precious. Our newspapers sometimes carry
stories of extraordinary, real life dramas where
danger is measured in minutes and even split
seconds. You may have read about the last
minute rescue of somebody who has fallen on
a railway track, before a speeding train
whizzes past, or from a blazing inferno, before
everything is engulfed in flames. Those crucial
seconds often mean all the difference between
life and death.
However, exciting dramas in actual life do
not occur all the time. Nonetheless, in our own
lives we are deeply aware of time constantly,
and indeed measure our existence by it. Our
entire lives pass by to the steady ticking of
clocks. Time plays a vital role even for the most
ordinary purposes. We are rushing for buses
and trains and connecting flights, and time is
often fixed for appointments with the dentist
or school principal.
So the measurement of time becomes most
important for us. We wear wristwatches that
tell us the time even if there is no clock around.
Every home has at least one clock.
Take a look at your own day. You are
probably awakened in the morning when your
alarm clock says, "Get up." In very little time
you have brushed your teeth and are ready
for school. It is important to be on time, or you

17
will be punished for coming late. In school,
lessons are held according to the class time-
table, and the buzz of the bell tells you when a
certain period is over. If you have a test or
classwork, you look at your watch even more
than usual to make sure that you finish in time.
Back home, life follows a pattern according
to time, and before you know, it is bedtime!
The days run into weeks, and weeks into
months and suddenly you are a whole year
older! It certainly is time to celebrate.
The calendar that hangs in your room helps
to plan things over the year. It would be
difficult indeed to live without clocks and
calendars. They help us save time as well as
measure it. There is a saying, 'A penny saved
is a penny earned.' One might just as well say,
'A minute saved is a minute earned.' If you
work wholeheartedly, you could easily save a
minute here and a minute there to finish a job
faster. By the end of the day, you could save
an hour from all these little minutes. In a
year's time these hours would add up to
precious week's, even months! Imagine what
they would amount to over five years!
So, if you do not dawdle over things but do
them on time, you do well both at work and at
play. Take care of the minutes and the hours
will take care of themselves. And never do
tomorrow what you can do today! Ever
remember, a stitch in time saves nine! Many
old proverbs like these tell us to make the

18
 > g

most of our time. After all, time and tide wait

for no man! See if you can think of any more
of these time tested sayings!
Even as you look at a clock and watch a
second tick away, it is gone. For us, a second
as a basic unit of time seems adequate.
Actually our clocks and watches do not need
to be accurate to more than half a minute or
so in our daily routine. Certainly, they should
not run much slower or faster. If your school
bus arrives at the bus stop at 7 o'clock every
morning, it is not much point going there at
five minutes past seven, is there?
Sometimes, however, we do need more
accurate timing. Track events and swimming
meets are timed in fractions of seconds. It can
make all the difference between being a
winner or a loser.
Our technological world needs even more
precise time. An astronomer makes his
calculations based on fractions of a second. A
navigator at sea or in an aircraft, plotting
location by satellite, relies on a time signal
which is accurate to within a single millionth
of a second (microsecond).
You will be astounded to know that scientific
technology has split the microsecond even
further. Spacecrafts like the Voyager II are
guided by radio signals timed to the
nanosecond (0.000000001 of a second).
Physicists tracking motion inside an atom
reckon in picoseconds (thousandths of a

19
 nanosecond) or even femtoseconds
(thousandths of a picosecond). Such minute
splitting of seconds is mind-boggling, to say
the least. If you find it difficult to grasp, look
at it this way. There are more femtoseconds in
a second than there were seconds in the past
31 million years!
During the last few years, clocks have been
perfected so well that even if they were not
altered for a thousand years, they would still
give you the time, correct to within a second.
Time touches us all, young and old, city and
village dweller alike. We live our lives
according to pattern, based on the clock or
calendar. Though village life follows a more
leisurely pace than life in the city, the farmer
must follow seasonal patterns, to sow and to
reap his harvest at proper times.
You may have heard your grandparents or
older people talk of the 'good old days' when
the relentless ticking of clocks did not rule
their lives. Communication was slow. People
often embarked on journeys by foot or bullock
Babylonian shadow stick
cart which took months altogether!
Today, as man progresses in all spheres of
activity, it has become vital to make the most
of time. Modern telex fax machines, electronic
mail or e-mail have made communication
practically instantaneous. Time is really what
you make of it!

20
Nature's Time Divisions

Do you have a baby brother or sister at home

who wails when you are fast asleep, or is
hungry long after everybody has eaten? If you
do, you may be sure he is, in some ways, quite
like our early ancestors. For they too had little
sense of time! They seemed to live in a 'timeless
present' when they hunted or ate or rested,
with little or no sense of either the past or
the future.
Yet, even in the beginning, when man was
little better than a savage, he would watch that
great, golden ball, the sun, arcing across the
sky everyday. He saw the wonder of the sunrise
as the sun spread its red rays to bring daylight
into a dark and sleepy world. As the sun
moved high overhead, man knew it was time
to hunt and fish. And later, when the buds
closed and the birds flew home to their nests,;

21
he saw darkness setting in on earth with the
setting sun. It was time to go back to the safety
of his cave to rest. He did not quite understand
where the sun came from, or where it went
every night, but he certainly did feel day and
night occurred. And he realized that it had
something to do with the regular coming and
going of the sun.
Many thousands of years hence, man was a
much cleverer being, for he now knew many
more things. He was still fascinated by the vast
sky above, and studied the movements of the
sun and the heavenly bodies. It would be a
long time yet before he had any proper clocks,
but he could guess the time of the day just by
looking at the position of the sun in the sky. It
was his first clock.
The sun seemed to move slowly but surely,
in a wide curve from east to west. It was easy
to recognize sunrise and sunset, but more
difficult to tell when it was mid-day. That was
when the sun is highest above the horizon and
right overhead. Man came to recognize that
half the daylight hours were spent when the
sun lay between the two positions that marked
sunrise and sunset. He knew then that it was
mid-day or noon.
At night, the movement of the stars in the
sky served the same purpose. Man noticed that
as the night passed, different groups of stars
became visible. They seemed to form pictures
in the sky in the shapes of men and animals.

23

Waxing and waning of the moon
He learned to tell the time at night by looking
at these star pictures as well.
The sky was indeed a kind of gigantic clock
that man was learning to read quite well and
to tell the right time of the day. Indeed, even
in those far-off days, it was important for him
to know when he was supposed to be
somewhere. For was not there a certain time
for the temple, a time for meeting friends, a
time for work and for play...?
The idea of the month probably came with
the observation of the changing shapes of the
moon. Man noticed a strange thing in the sky.
The moon seemed to grow bigger and become
round in 15 days till it became a full moon.
After that, over the next 15 days, it appeared
to become smaller before finally disappearing
from the sky altogether. This was a regular
cycle, he noticed which spread over 30 days,
before it started all over again.
It is likely that the change in seasons gave
birth to the idea of the year. The cold, windy
winter when man huddled before a fire to keep
himself warm was followed by spring. Then
the earth turned green and joyful, the birds
sang and flowers bloomed. And then came the
blazing, hot summer when the earth became
parched and dry, and everything dried up. The
monsoons provided some solace from the heat.
And leaves fell off the trees in autumn before
winter came once again. This cycle of seasons
covered about 365 days or a whole year.
24
 It was, therefore, quite early in history that
man started counting time by days, months,
seasons and years. These were really the first
beginnings of the calendar.
In ancient times, man had a very simple
picture of the universe. He believed that the
sun, moon, stars, and planets were small
objects that moved round the earth. The
universe was taken to be a great dome over-
head having glittering lights. Below, in the
centre of all creation, lay the vast, flat,
immovable earth around which everything
else moved.
It was only in the sixth century B.C. that the
idea of the earth being a sphere was first
suggested. Ten centuries later, the sun was
suggested as the centre of the universe. Then
came the invention of the wonderful telescope
that actually saw much more than what the
human eye could see or even imagine. Man
had a better way of looking at the vast expanse
of space around him. As more and more facts
were gathered and knowledge grew, our modern
idea of the universe gradually developed.
Scientists tell us that our earth is a planet, a
globe nearly 8,000 miles in diameter, which
Early telescope
moves round the sun. The sun itself is a star.
Actually, it is much smaller and less bright
than many of the stars in the sky. Only it seems
so big and hot to us because it is much closer
to us than any other star. The distance of the
sun from the earth is about 93 million miles,

25

The earth spins on its axis
which does seem a huge distance. If you
journeyed to the sun in an aircraft at a steady
speed of 1,000 miles per hour, you would not
arrive for ten years! However, considering the
vastness of distances in space, this figure is not
really very much.
Just as it appeared to our ancestors, the sun
seems to us too to rise in the east and journey
across the vast archway of the sky before
setting in the west. At night it disappears
altogether from our sight.
This movement does not actually happen,
but appears to do so. The sun at night is in
exactly the same place as it was during the
day. It is we who have moved!
We know now that the earth is like a ball
that spins on its axis. If you were to stick a
knitting needle through the ball of wool, it will
be very easy to understand what this means.
The ball represents the earth, and the knitting
needle is the axis of rotation.
Day and night occur because the earth
makes one turn on its axis every twentyfour
hours. When one side of the earth faces the
sun, we have daylight. When the same side of
the earth turns away from the sun, we have
night. While we are fast asleep in the night,
someone on the other side of the earth is
waking up to start a new day, because his part
of the earth is turning towards the sun.
We could understand better the occurrence
of day and night by actually experimenting
26
with our ball of wool and a torch in a darkened
room. Place the lit torch on a fable, and shine
it directly on the ball of wool. The torch is the
sun and the ball, naturally, is the earth. What
do you see? The 'torch-sun' lights up one side
of the ball, while the other side, which is not
facing the 'torch-sun', is in total darkness. Now
rotate the ball slowly on the knitting needle
'axis'. Each part of the ball gets illuminated in
turn. Parts which were dark or had 'night' are
now lit up to have 'day', while the lighted parts
move into the dark side. Day thus turns into
night. This is exactly what happens to the
rotating earth.
 The sun appears to us to move because
of the earth's rotation. The period taken for
the earth to make a complete turn from
west to east, a 'day', was our first unit of time
measurement. Man later divided this into
24 shorter periods called hours.
Some of these hours occur at night and
others in the daytime. Remember that the 'day'
of 24 hours is not all daylight. It consists of
both daylight and night. We, however, call it a
day in science, which does seem to be rather
muddling at first.
Did you ever realize that you are living on
a great, big spaceship? Every day and every
night! If you have travelled at 66 miles per hour
in a car, you know how fast trees, houses and
people seem to whizz past. Imagine what it
would be like if you were to move 1,000 times
faster! That is the speed at which the earth
travels round the sun—66,000 miles an hour!
Even the world's fastest jetliner, the supersonic
Concorde, moves about 1,450 miles an hour.
That is why living on the planet earth is just
like riding a great spaceship. It is faster than
anything we can imagine.
You should remember that the earth moves
in two distinct ways at the same time. We
just saw how it rotates, spinning like a top
Rotation of the earth on its own axis, causing day and night to
happen. The second kind of movement is its
revolution round the sun. It moves at an
amazing speed in a great circle round the sun,

28
covering every day 15,84,000 miles. The earth's full journey of
about 5,84,000,000 miles round the sun takes nearly 365 days and
six hours to cover.
Like all the ancients, people in the great civilizations of Babylon
and Egypt were drawn to the movement of the heavens and the
changing seasons. It was probably their regular occurrence that
gave birth to the idea of the year. Thus the Babylonians developed
a 'year' of 360 days, which was about the time the earth took to
make its long journey around the sun. The practical Egyptians
extended this year by five days which they set aside for feasting
during the annual flooding of the river Nile.
So the 365-day solar 'year' came into use. After the 'day', the
year was the next unit of time measurement to be drawn up.
However, although a round figure of 365 days seemed accurate
enough to use in everyday life, it was not really very exact, and
created many problems in the early calendars, as we shall see soon.
Clever improvements by the Romans and by Pope Gregory XIII
Revolution of the earth round the sun
in 1582 gave us today's Gregorian calendar,
which is accurate to a day in every 3,323 years.
With man's progress in science, he has
accurately calculated that it takes the earth
365 days and five hours, 48 minutes, 45.5
seconds (and another 1/100th of a second) to
make a complete circle round the sun.
As you can see right away, it is quite
impossible to divide our calendar to include
those extra hours and seconds. So, we just say
that a year has 365 days. We do not throw
away the extra hours but save them up very
carefully. Every fourth year is called a leap
year, when we add a whole extra day to the
year to make it 366 days long. So we manage
to stay even again with time. If we did not do
this, think of* the total mess our calendars
would be in! They would just keep falling
further and further behind. In a matter of a
few hundred years we would have February
where January ought to have been!
If you are good at maths, you can figure
out yourself when leap years are coming.
Every year that is exactly divisible by four is a
leap year. Remember, there should be no
remainders. However, there is one exception.
If you are looking at the years at the turn of
the century, like 1900 or 2000, they must be
divisible by both four and 400 to be leap years.
Now calculate—yes, 2000 A.D. was a leap year
but 1900 A.D. was not.
Nature's third time division was drawn up

30
by a thorough study of the movements of the moon, that shiny,
white disc in the sky that does not stick to one shape. It takes on
different shapes on different days. The ancients were enthusiastic
moon-gazers! They observed that the interval between one fully
round moon and the next is always about 30 days (29.5 days to be
more precise). This lunar 'month' became their third unit of time
measurement.
Science tells us that this is the time taken by the moon to
complete one revolution round the earth. The moon is actually a
natural satellite of the earth. It travels round the earth, just as the
earth travels round the sun.
The moon is much closer to the earth than anything else in the
sky. It is about 2,34,000 miles away. That is why it looks so large! If
you were to travel ten times round the earth's equator, you would
cover a greater distance than that between the earth and the moon.
Down the ages there were lots and lots of stories about the
The moon goes round the earth thirteen times in one turn
round the sun, or one year.
moon, that it was made of silver or cheese—
or even had a man who was supposed to be
watching you! It was popularly believed that
the moon was the land of the dead, where
everything went after life. Dark areas on its
surface were given fanciful names like 'Sea of
Showers' and 'Sea of Nectar'. Scientists have
now found that the moon is a dead world. It
has no air, water or life of its own. Even its
bright light is not its own. Then, how do we
see it shine at night?
The moon reflects the light sent to it by the
sun. The sun lights up one side of the moon at
one time. So the moon appears to change its
shape at different times of the month and we
see different 'phases' of the moon.
When the moon is between us and the sun,
we face its dark side. We cannot see it at all.
We call this 'no moon' the 'new moon'.
However, when the earth is between the sun
and the moon, the lit side of the moon faces
us and we see the 'full moon', big moon as a
crescent, a 'half-moon' and a three quarter disc.
The old sky watchers observed that twelve
lunar months covered a complete cycle of four
seasons, or one year. So they divided the year
into twelve parts of 30 days each—the twelve
months. However, once again, as with the year,
there were difficulties with the early calendars.
So months were lengthened or shortened, even
though they were originally linked with the
phases of the moon. We find today, not all the
months are of the same length. January has
31 days while February has only 28 or 29.
It is not difficult to see how these three
earliest time units are nature's own time
divisions. The day depends on the earth's
rotation on its axis, the year upon its journey
round the sun, and the month upon the moon's
journey round the earth. The earth is a faithful
timekeeper. Never has the day, month or year
fallen back in time, although today's
astronomers say it is losing a fraction of a
second per century! Once man realized how Phases of the moon

well earth keeps track of time, he sought to

measure it himself with a variety of the
strangest devices. These were our very first
man-made clocks.

33
 Soon the
shadow lei
had movec
Early man i
every now,
Why could
He grumbl
moved half
its shadow,
keptmovin
creature...h<
Telling Time By Shadows was that it ^
Much, n
It was a blazing, hot morning. The sun beat whenever s<
down bright and strong, making all living a shadow w
creatures scurry for the shade. Early man sat not a creatu
in the cool shadow of a leafy tree. He was all had shad
armed with big hunting sticks and spears, but that when h
it was too hot to look for a meal that morning. a shadow o:
He was content to lie there, chewing juicy bits walked, anc
of fruit. In a while, he was fast asleep. He realizec
When he awoke, the sun was right because he:
overhead. He blinked hard. It seemed hotter looked at th(
than ever, for the shade had almost times of the
disappeared. Indeed, the shadow of the tree remained t
had shortened to a mere stump. Moreover, it morning, wh
had moved away from him. Early man long his sha
grunted irritably and moved into the little, shorter as th
dark patch. There was not another tree the evening,
for miles around. There were some big dipped towc
boulders, but their shadows too had virtually The direct
disappeared. the directior

34
 Soon the sun began to go down. The .tree's
shadow lengthened once again, although it
had moved around in a kind of semi-circle.
Early man found that he had to keep moving
every now and then to stay within the shade.
Why could he not sleep in peace at one spot?
He grumbled to himself. He found he had
moved half a circle round the tree following
its shadow. He did not know why the shadow
kept moving. Maybe it was some kind of dark
creature...he really did not know! All he knew
was that it was good for a cool nap.
Much, much later, man observed that
whenever something came in the way of light,
a shadow was formed. No, the shadow was
not a creature at all! Rocks, trees, even hills,
all had shadows in their own shapes. He saw
that when he walked in the sun, he too made
a shadow on the ground. It walked when he
walked, and it stayed still when he was still.
He realized that his shadow was formed
because he stood in the path of sunlight. He
looked at the shadow with interest at different
times of the day. It was strange that it never
remained the same size for long! In the
morning, when the sun was low in the sky, how
long his shadow was! It became shorter and
shorter as the mid-day sun rose overhead. In
the evening, it grew long once again as the sun
dipped towards the horizon.
The direction of shadows changed too, as
the direction of the sun changed. We know

35
now that s
opposite to
length of th<
which the s
sun changes
the directioi
keep chang
that time, t
things as w<
He thou
experiment
ground, he 1
shrank in tin
round the t
sun moved
began to gh
of the day.
firmly stud
out in the o
its shadow \
sun. He ma
cast by the
placed arou
markings tl
that every <
shadow fell
' Withprac
could judge
noting the
Earlier, he
and sunset
directly at t
now that shadows form in the direction
opposite to the source of light. Also that the
length of the shadow depends on the angle at
which the sunlight hits the object. Since the
sun changes its position in the sky all the time,
the direction as well as the length of shadows
keep changing. Man did not know all this at
that time, but he was trying to understand
things as well as he could.
He thought hard, and even began to
experiment. When he stuck a twig into the
ground, he found that its shadow, too, grew or
shrank in the course of the day. It also moved
round the twig in a kind of half-circle as the
sun moved in the sky. The size of the shadow
began to give him an idea of the general time
of the day. A clever thought struck him. He
firmly stuck an upright pole into the ground,
out in the open. Like everything else he saw,
its shadow too moved with the position of the
sun. He marked the progress of the shadow
cast by the pole with some stones which he
placed around the pole. He looked at his stone
markings the next day and the next. He saw
that every day, at different times, the pole's
shadow fell on the same markings.
* With practice, man became cleverer still. He
could judge the position of the sun simply by
noting the position of the pole's shadow!
Earlier, he had begun to recognize sunrise
and sunset, and even mid-day, by looking
directly at the position of the sun in the sky.

37
However, in between these times, it was
difficult to tell the time by the sun's position.
Man found that he could measure the passing
of time more accurately by watching shadows,
than by looking at the sun and trying to guess
the time of day.
Man had actually made the first crude
clock! Of course, it was nothing like the clocks
we have today, which have an hour and a
minute hand moving round a dial. But it was
the simplest way to measure time.
Shadow sticks helped people tell the time
long before proper clocks were invented. It is
believed that the Babylonians first used these
early clocks as long ago as 5,000 years.
Naturally, these peculiar clocks worked only
when the sun was shining, and could not be
used at night, when there were no shadows!

38
 This simple shadow and pole arrangement
was the basis of the various shadow clocks
which were used by the ancient Egyptians
between 800 and 1,000 years B.C.
The shadow clock was a clever invention,
although not a very accurate timekeeper. It
was a fairly simple device, consisting of a
straight base placed in an east to west
direction, on which stood a crosspiece. This
crosspiece was placed at the east end of the
base in the morning, and shifted to the west
end in the afternoon. As the sun's rays fell on
the crosspiece, it cast its shadow on the base.
This was marked by a scale of six time
divisions, so intervals of time could be
measured.
We know that daytime is never of the same The shadow clock

length over the year. Summer days are much

longer than days in winter, when the sun rises
late and retires earlier to bed as well, just like
some of you do! In north India, for instance,
you must have seen how summer days stretch
to over 14 hours, while the winter days are
barely 10 hours long, and your play-time is
shortened. This variation in daytime increases
as one travels further north.
Clearly, these changing lengths of daytime
would create many problems while using
shadow clocks. For the 'temporary' hours, as
their time divisions were called, would vary
over the year in length. An early Egyptian
schoolboy would find, to his greatest dismay,

39
 that a class in the summer months would
really stretch longer than it did in the winter!
He must have fidgeted restlessly during those
hot hours, and probably earned a caning from
his irate teacher! However, the Egyptians have
not completely discarded clocks of this kind,
for they are still in use in primitive parts.
From the shadow clock, it was an easy step
to inventing the sundial which is, in reality, a
shadow clock, for it too depends on shadows
cast by the sun to tell the time.
It is said that the people of ancient Egypt
and Mesopotamia developed the first sundials.
In fact, the earliest known sundial still
preserved is an Egyptian shadow clock about
3,000 years old. It consists of a stick raised
above the ground, and a circular dial with
markings for hours around it. As the sun
changed its position in the sky, the length and
position of the stick's shadow falling on the
Egyptian shadow clock dial would change as well.
The Egyptians divided the day between
sunrise and sunset into twelve periods of time,
which were marked on their sundials. They
divided the night too into twelve time periods,
corresponding to the rising of twelve stars.
Why did they have twelve divisions and not
eight or ten? We do not know for sure, but the
twelve-hour time division may have been
taken from the numbering system of
Mesopotamia, or from star patterns they saw
in the sky.

40
 Our 24-hour day is, in fact,
based on this ancient Egyptian
division of day and night.
Actually, there is nothing
occurring in nature or in the
world that has anything to do
with having 24 time divisions in
the day. They were made by man
for his own convenience.
In those days sundials were
made of blocks of wood with
pointers. Later still, huge stone
columns were used. By carefully
working out the markings on the
dial and the tilt of the pointer or
arm, it became possible to make
a good sundial. This could
measure ordinary hours of
uniform length, instead of the old
'temporary' ones that kept
changing with the seasons.
The Greeks and Romans took
the idea of the sundial from the
Egyptians. It was probably
better than any other time-
measuring instrument they
knew. From them it spread to
Britain and other parts of Europe.
Cleopatra's needle, at present, on
the Thames embankment in
London, was once part of a Cleopatra's needle
sundial. Smaller sundials were

41
 used too. One small Egyptian sundial, about
3,500 years old, is shaped like an 'L'. It lies flat
on its longer leg, on which marks show six
periods of time. The shadow cast by the
shorter arm would fall on the divisions to
indicate the hour.
About 300 B.C. a Chaldean astronomer
invented a new kind of sundial, shaped like a
bowl. The shadow of its pointer moved along
and marked 12 hours of the day. This kind of
sundial proved very accurate and was used
for many centuries.
In fact, sundials of all shapes and sizes came
into popular use. Some were crude structures,
others amazingly accurate. The glass on an
unusual sixteenth century sundial focused the
rays of the noon sun onto some gun-powder
in a cannon. A regular explosion at 12 noon
was its effective time signal! Pocket-sized
sundials were most popular in the eighteenth
century. On the other hand, the enormous
eighteenth century sundial at Jaipur has a
triangular gnomon or stick 44 m high. Its
huge shadow falls on a curved dial which
measures 30 m across. This is the world's
biggest sundial.
The sundial was perfected over the centuries
to tell the time accurately. In a good sundial,
the pointer directly faces the north or south
Pole Star. It slants at an angle equal to the
A sundial latitude of the place it is in. A vertical pointer
will show the right time only at one latitude

42

V
and in one season. Hour marks
are spaced unequally on a flat
dial. However, sundials today are
built in gardens more as
decorative pieces than for their
usefulness.
It is easy enough to make your
own sundial, and to see for
yourself how our ancestors
measured time. Set up a 'shadow
stick' in the open. Carefully mark
its shadow at different hours of
the day on the dial. Note the time
above each shadow. Your 'clock'
is now ready! You can read
these markings to tell the time
correctly enough if you cannot
find your watch. Remember to
keep this sundial fixed firmly in
the same place. However, once
the sun goes down, or it begins
to rain, you will have to look
at your watch again to know
the time! A sundial

43
 Man Keeps Track Of Time

People used sundials for at least a thousand

years to keep track of the hours. Yet, they found
that they needed to know the time more
accurately, and often when it was raining or
cloudy. Like us, they sometimes wanted to
know the time at night too. What could they
do then? After all, shadow clocks were quite
useless when there was no sunshine.
Necessity is the mother of invention. Not
surprisingly, people devised other means to
measure time. Many of these seem most
strange, and even amusing to us in the peculiar
ways that they worked. They did not resemble
our familiar clocks in the least. However, they
were popular timekeepers of long ago, both
during the daytime and the night.
The inventive Egyptians again put their
imagination to work, to develop the water-
Water-clock—water turns the
drum which winds the hands.
clock or 'clepsydra'. This device measured

44

* >

•
time by the gradual flow of water. If you were
to look at it, you would laugh, for this 'clock'
merely looked like a big bathtub full of water!
The water-clock was actually a basin-
shaped, stone vessel with a small hole at the
bottom. Its inner walls were marked with
divisions to show the hours, so the 'clock' was
easy to read. To start the clock, the vessel was
filled to the brim with water. As the water ran
out through the hole in the bottom, the level
of water in the vessel kept falling. When the
water level dropped to the first mark on the
walls, it indicated that the clock had been
running for one hour. If the water level fell to
the next mark, it showed that the clock had
run for two hours. In this way, as marks were
exposed, the time could be read.
The clepsydra was a simple clock, but rather
cumbersome. It certainly could not be carried
around to tell the hours! Archaeologists have
discovered water-clocks, some over 3,000
years old, in Egypt. In the oldest water-clocks,
it is interesting that the wall markings do not
allow for the fact that as water drained out,
pressure was reduced and its flow slowed
down. So the time these early water-clocks
indicated could not have been too accurate.
In India and China, water-clocks of another
form were used. An empty, brass pot with a
small hole in its bottom was set afloat in a big Water-clocks
vessel of water. The brass vessel slowly filled
with water, and within a set time sank to the

45
 bottom of the big vessel. Watchkeepers of the
hour would sound a loud gong before fishing
out the bowl and setting it afloat again for the
next time interval.
Even the primitive Indians of North
America and some African tribes used a
similar kind of water-clock. This consisted of
a small boat which was filled with water
through a hole till it sank in the pond or
stream it was floated in. Imagine the tribesmen
diving into the water at the oddest of hours to
retrieve their 'clock'!
Later, the Greeks and Romans made water-
clocks that were more complicated devices,
although they worked on the same principle.
The Roman water-clock consisted of a cylinder
into which water dripped from a reservoir.
This caused a float to rise and gave readings
against a scale on the cylinder. However, these
water-clocks were not reliable methods of
telling time, and had to be checked frequently
against a sundial.
Do you have an alarm clock that rings loud
Plato enough to wake you up early for school?
(427? 347 B.C.) School students seem to have been
traditionally startled out of their sleep down
the ages! Even 2,400 years ago, drowsy Greek
students jumped out of bed to the shrill whistle
of their alarm clock. And this was probably
loud enough to make them jump out of their
skins as well!
The ancient Greek philosopher Plato

46

m
invented an ingenious alarm clock by fitting a
siphon (a bent tube used to transfer liquids
from one vessel to another) to water-clock. As
soon as the water was level with the top of the
siphon, it ran down a tube into a vessel below
so quickly that the air in it was compressed,
and escaped through a pipe with a piercing
whistle. Plato effectively used this device to
summon his pupils for classes at the unearthly
hour of 4 a.m. It is not likely that they could
have continued to sleep once their alarm clock
went off! Since this had to be set six hours
beforehand, Plato probably did not get much
sleep himself as he set about adjusting it!
Water-clocks were used for a variety of
purposes. Orators's speeches were timed by
them, so one knew when to tell them to stop!
They later became the first clocks with
movable parts.
About 140 B.C., the Greeks and the Romans
used the toothed wheel to improve the water-
clock. Water dripped into a cylinder and made
a floating piston rise as it trickled in. This
piston was connected to a toothed wheel. The
wheel moved a pointer which served as the
single hand, the hour hand, of a clock. It
A water-clock
gradually turned from one hour mark to
another, on a dial.
The Chinese civilization flourished in the
Orient, with the development of many
remarkable inventions, independent of the
rest of the world. In the eleventh century A.D.

47
 a Chinese scholar, Su Song, constructed an
enormous clock that was among the first
mechanical water-clocks. It had a 12-metre
high tower and was worked by a 20-tonne
bronze waterwheel complete with shafts and
levers, for 1.5 tonnes of water! Su Song's clock
signalled the quarter hours with gongs, bells
and even a musical instrument. So people
living around just could not say that they did
not know the time!
As late as the sixteenth century, the famous
scientist Galileo used a mercury water-clock
to time his experiment on falling bodies.
The principle of the water-clock, where the
reservoir emptied in a set time, was also the
principle of the sand-glass, invented much
later. Only, fine sand was used instead of
water. Initially, this 'clock' looked rather like
a flower pot with a hole at the bottom. The
pot was filled with sand which dropped
through the hole into another pot below. The
lower pot would fill up in a certain time, and
so give indications of time. Although these
clocks were smaller than water-clocks, they
were rather messy and did not become very
popular.
A sandglass
About 2,000 years ago, people developed
still another kind of sandglass. You may have
seen this rather delicate looking instrument
in some kitchens for the egg-timers we use
today are a type of sandglass.
It consisted of two hollow glass vessels,

48
connected by a narrow 'neck'. The upper
vessel was filled with fine sand, which trickled
slowly into the lower vessel through the neck.
It emptied the upper vessel in a precise
measured period of time. Time intervals could
also be measured by checking the amount of
sand that had trickled through. The sandglass
was inverted to restart its time measurement.
No doubt, the measurement of time
depended on the size of the glass vessels, the
amount of sand and the narrowness of the
neck. The top vessel could be filled with
enough sand to flow through the neck for one
hour. That is why the sandglass came to be
called the 'hourglass'.
On the pulpits, preachers often placed an
hourglass which ran for a whole hour.
Everybody could see how much longer Sandglass/hourglass
sermons would last, and not surprisingly,
many made use of this time to snatch forty
winks on a Sunday morning in church!
On ships, hourglass was invaluable in
measuring time and even speed during
voyages. Ships kept four hourglasses which
timed the length of one watch, that is, a period
during which part of a ship's crew are on duty.
The hourglass was turned over at the end of
each four-hourly watch.
Another sandglass on board lasted only
28 seconds. It was used to time a length of line
thrown overboard with a log at its end. The
ship's speed could be calculated by counting

49
 the knots on the rope that ran out during
these 28 seconds. The knots were tied at
intervals of about 47 feet. Even today, sailors
measure the speed of their ships in knots or
nautical miles per hour. A land mile, as you
know, measures 5,280 feet, but a nautical
mile is longer, measuring 6,080 feet. The
term 'knot' probably came from the old way
of measuring the speed of the ship with a
sandglass and knotted rope.
It is said that Christopher Columbus made
all his long voyages with only one 'clock' on
board—a half-hour sandglass! Someone
must have kept constant and careful watch
on it to measure time.
Today, if you want to boil an egg for three
minutes and you have an egg-timer or three-
minute sandglass, you cannot really go
wrong. Start the sand 'clock' as soon as you
have dropped the egg into boiling water on
the fire. When the sand has run through from
one glass vessel to the other, the egg is hard-
boiled. But if you are impatient and do
not wait for the sand to run right through,
you will have to eat a rather 'gooey' egg. If,
on the other hand, the egg keeps boiling
after the sandglass has run through, you
will have to chew a very hard-boiled egg
indeed!
Some popular indoor games too use sand-
glasses to set a time limit. A watch would,
Christopher Columbus
(1451-1506) no doubt, be more accurate, but a sandglass

50
 is an easy and interesting way of keeping
track of the minutes.
The Chinese adopted a rather peculiar and
laborious way of telling time. They knotted
a rope at equal distances. This rope was
wetted and set alight at one end. The time
taken by the fire to reach from one knot to
the next marked a unit of time!
King Alfred spent much of his life fighting
off the Danes from England. He probably
needed to know the time often during his
campaigns. In fact, he was the first person
outside China to use the fire technique in
870 a.d. to measure the minutes, though in
his own way. He invented a 'candlestick
clock' which had notches marked down the
entire length of the candle. It was placed
inside a wooden lantern to protect it from
any gusts of wind. King Alfred estimated
that the candle took exactly four hours to
burn down completely. If it were half
burned, it meant that two hours had elapsed.
The smaller markings on the candle, three
for every hour, gave smaller indications of
time as the candle burned from notch to
notch. When it had burned out completely,
Candlestick clock—candle is
another candle was lit at once, so the 'clock' marked in hours
ran continuously. You can well imagine King
Alfred spending long hours keeping vigil
against enemy attacks, by watching his clock
burn steadily in the dark.
All this while, even as people devised the

51

1
 strangest ways to tell time, others were
trying to know more and more about the
large number of stars in the sky every night.
The science of astronomy was gradually
developed through the study of stars
and planets.
A new way of telling time, by following
star movements and patterns closely in the
sky, was discovered. The Pole Star or Polaris
was noticed to remain constantly above the
North Pole. The earth's axis of rotation
pointed northwards towards it. Polaris
seemed to remain almost still in the sky
while everything else revolved around it
once in 24 hours. Star watchers used two of
AUtl the stars in the Plough constellation as
'Pointers'. These seemed to travel round
Polaris once in 24 hours. It was logical that
time intervals could be measured by noting
how much the Pointers had moved. In fact,
any star could be used in this way on a dark
and clear night. In those faraway days,
instruments called 'nocturnals' were deve-
loped to help tell the time through stars.
It was not till much later, around the
thirteenth century, that the mechanical clock
was invented. Till that happened, people
relied on devices like water-clocks, sundials
and 'nocturnals' to measure the passing of
Garden sundial
the hours. However, these were not accurate
timekeepers and were inconvenient to use
because of their bulk and immovability.

52
With the invention of the ingenious mechanical
clock, keeping time started to become really
accurate and more simplified.

53
The Clock Goes Tick-Tock

It was a wintry morning in Pisa, Italy, in the

sixteenth century. A young student of
seventeen years sat motionless in the Pisa
cathedral. He looked worried and unhappy,
and hardly glanced at the book of psalm that
lay in his hands.
He was in a dilemma. He wanted to study
mathematics, his first love. His father insisted
that he study medicine. He had little interest
in the subject, although he had already started
studying it at the University of Pisa. His father
was, indeed, difficult to disobey!
As the lad pondered over his problems, his
gaze shifted to the high ceiling of the
cathedral. Some repair work was being
carried out there, and a lantern swung to and
fro. He began to watch it with interest as it
swung in wide arcs. Suddenly, his eyes
widened. The arcs were becoming smaller

54
J
 and smaller, but big or small, they seemed to
take the same amount of time to swing. It was
strange indeed!
Galileo, for that was the lad's name, sat up
straight in excitement, and felt his pulse. Its
regular beat was his best time-keeper, and he
began to time the lantern's swings. He was
right. The lantern always required the same
amount of time to complete a swing, no matter
how long the range of its swing.
Galileo did things thoroughly. He ran home
in excitement to try out his own experiments.
He fixed one end of a string to the branch of a
big tree in his garden. He hung an iron weight
from its other end. He now pulled the string
back and released it. He had made a simple
pendulum, like the lantern in the church.
He next replaced the iron weight with a
much lighter wooden one. This too took the
same amount of time to swing to and fro, in a
regular motion.
Galileo thought hard. His experiment
confirmed that the time taken for one swing
remained the same, regardless of the weight
attached. However, the time taken for the
pendulum to swing did vary according to the
length of the string.
Galileo Galilei
(1564-1642)
Galileo, who later went on to study
mathematics and become a famous scientist,
had discovered the laws of the pendulum. This
early experiment made him realize later that
the pendulum, which was a weight fixed to a

56

I
v ;;
rod or .cord, could be used to regulate the
movements of a clock once it was put in
motion. After all, it had the astonishingly
useful habit of swinging to and fro at the same
speed according to its length.
However, seven decades passed before a
Dutch scientist, Christian Huygens, adopted
Galileo's idea to build the first pendulum clock
with a regulating movement.
Galileo's remarkable discovery ushered in
the era of accurate timekeeping. However, the
first mechanical clocks had already appeared
a few centuries earlier. Although it is difficult
to say exactly when, water-clocks with moving
parts were in use in China 500 years before, as
we earlier saw.
Around the thirteenth century A.D. the first
mechanical clocks appeared in monasteries in
Europe, and were operated by monks. They
were enormous structures, often weighing
several tonnes, and were made by unknown
ironsmiths. These early contraptions did not
have hands or a dial. They did not even strike
the hour. They were used to alert somebody
or to toll a bell that called monks to prayer.
Their movements were simple and noisy,
The pendulum escapement
driven as they were by weights and wheels.
Called 'turret clocks', these first clocks were
nearly always placed on church or bell towers,
so that everybody could see or at least hear
them in the town. They were not of much use
when they were out of sight or earshot for

57
 anybody who wanted to move about and still
know the time. However, despite their crude
working, they managed to work for many
years, although they did not always tell the
correct time!
The word 'clock' or 'clok' as it was called in
Middle English, goes back to this time. It was
taken from the French word cloche which
German means a bell. French was widely spoken by the
rack English upper classes, and many English
clock
words were 'borrowed' from it. Bells were,
therefore, associated with clocks in those early
days of mechanical timekeeping. In fact,
even before mechanical clocks existed,
churches and monasteries rang bells to tell the
common folk that it was time for prayers. The
devout would stop all their activities, to say
German their prayers.
novelty
clock Some of these prayers for which bells were
rung were called sexts and nones. These terms
were taken from Latin, and meant the sixth
hour and the ninth hour, when prayers were
said. So the ringing of prayer bells also
indicated the time.
Even when mechanical clocks with dials
and hour hands were made they struck the
hours and were used in the same way as
prayer bells. So it is little wonder that all
timekeepers were called clocks or cloches. The
French themselves, strangely enough, call a
clock horloge, which has nothing to do with
bells but indicates 'hours'.

58
 From the beginning, these clocks were
designed to tell the time by dividing the day
into 24 equal hours. This was based on the
ancient Egyptian time division of one day. The
hours were further divided into two lots of 12
hours each for every day, that is, 12 hours of
daytime and 12 hours of night. However, we
really do not know why the divisions fell in
the middle of the day and the night—falling
after noon and after midnight.
People had further divided each hour into
60 minutes, and each minute into 60 seconds. Rolling clock
The figure 60 was probably taken from the from the 17th century
ancient Babylonian counting system which
used 60 in much the same way as we use 10.
However, the earlier mechanical clocks did not
bother about marking smaller divisions for
minutes on their dials, or using a minute hand.
This was just as well, considering that they
were not very accurate anyway!
Some of these early clocks still exist. The
oldest surviving clock in England is at the
Salisbury Cathedral, and is over 500 years old.
It has an ornate dial, with 24 hours marked
on its face in two lots of 12 hours each. This
clock struck the hours.
The mechanical clock was indeed a big leap
from the age of sundials and sandglasses. It
worked in a rather clever way. A weight was
attached to a cord wrapped around a drum.
Falling ball clock
As the weight hung down, the cord unwound, of the 17th century
turning the drum. This in turn moved a series

59
 of toothed wheels or gears. The wheels turned
a pointing hand on the dial to tell the hour.
This does sound easy enough, but in actual
practice, it was quite difficult to make. This
was because the hand had to move steadily
and go right round a circle once in every 12
hours, without changing speed. For this, a
mechanism called an 'escape wheel' was later
provided, which served as a kind of brake.
This prevented the hour hand from whizzing
around the dial.
Although these clocks were most useful,
they did lose at least half an hour everyday.
So we cannot say that they were very reliable
timekeepers. Luckily there were no trains or
aeroplanes to catch in those days! It is likely
that the speed at which the parts of these
clocks moved was altered slightly by hot or
cold weather, as also by oiling or rusting of
these parts.
Late in the fourteenth century, the first
clocks appeared in homes. They were simply
smaller versions of these large public
clocks, and were rather plain structures,
with no protective cases. They usually stood
on a pedestal which had an opening to
American acorn clock accommodate their weights.
made about 1850
These domestic clocks must have taken
pride of place in the homes that possessed
them. You can imagine how their owners
probably invited much envy! For they could
now see the time at home always—rather than

60
having to rush out every time to the public
clock, in rain or hail, to see if the school bell
was about to ring! Do you know that many of
the things we take for granted today began as
great luxuries?
When you were much younger, you must
have had a few, favourite clockwork toys to
play with, which you wound with a key or
knob. Once these were wound and set down,
remember how the clockwork mouse ran or
the train moved with a loud whirr! You might
have even had a musical box that played a gay
tune once it was wound.
All these simple, mechanical toys are driven
by clockwork. They are provided with a coiled
 spring, which is a thin steel ribbon that bends
to form a tight coil when you wind it. When
released, the spring begins to uncoil and turns
gear wheels, which in turn drive a spindle or
axle around. This makes the toys move or play.
You may be wondering what all this has to do
with clocks or with time. Actually, many clocks
and watches are powered by coil springs in
much the same way as clockwork toys.
It was at the beginning of the sixteenth
century that the first spring-driven clocks
were made. Peter Henlein, a German lock-
Portable clock smith, had the ingenious idea of ridding clocks
of their heavy weights which made them
impossible to carry or shift around. He began
to make small clocks that measured four or
five inches in diameter and about three inches
in depth. These were the first portable
timepieces, carried by hand, and represented
one of the greatest strides in the history of
timekeeping.
The secret of these 'travelling timepieces'
was that they were driven by a spring instead
of by weights. Just as weights in a clock made
the drum turn around, so the coiled spring
made the wheel turn round. In principle, they
worked in just the same way.
A difficulty did crop up with these early
spring-powered clocks. In a weight-driven
clock, the driving weight always remained the
same. However, if you have seen a spring
unwind, you will notice that it pulls much

62
faster when it is fully wound than when it has
nearly uncoiled. This irregular movement
would make the clock move unsteadily too.
However, in about 1525 A.D., a Swiss
clockmaker overcame this rather serious
defect by inventing the 'fuses'. This was a
clever arrangement which used a spiral-
shaped drum to regulate the movement of
the spring.
Those portable clocks had dials placed on
their uppermost sides. They possessed an hour
hand, and were exposed to the air. Their
mechanisms were made wholly of iron. Later
brass was used, and steel for the more delicate
pieces. It was only later, in the seventeenth
century, that glass covers were made, and the
mechanism enclosed in brass cases.
The clock began to have a profound effect
on society as people became conscious of time.
It was not long before watches evolved from
portable clocks, in the sixteenth century itself.
At first, these were hung on belts or worn
round the neck. By the next century, it had
become most fashionable in Europe to carry a
pocket watch or 'watch fob', as it was called.
This was a short ribbon or chain attached to a
watch which hung out of the pocket in which
the watch was kept. Later, the more watches
one carried in waistcoat fob pockets, the more
fashionable one was considered!
Right till world war the first and the
development of wristwatches, watches for Pocket watch

63
 men had, in fact, to be carried about in pockets.
Galileo had prepared the way for the
invention of the modern clock with his
discovery of the laws of the pendulum. The
spring-driven clock or watch used a 'verge'
which depended for its accuracy on being
pushed with the same force all the time. Lots
of little things like heat and cold of the day
could affect its regular working. Christian
Huygens used the pendulum as the time
controller in clocks, instead of the verge. After
all, the regular movement of the pendulum
would not be affected by small changes in the
pull of the spring.
The idea worked, and suddenly there was a
great demand for clocks. Clocks were made
with short pendulums to hang on walls.The
next step was to enclose the pendulum and
weights, and the long case or stately
'grandfather clock' was born!
The pendulum commonly used in clocks, a
cord or a chain, has an 'escapement' device
which gives small, regular pushes to the
pendulum to keep it swinging. Each time the
pendulum swings aside, one tooth of a gear
wheel turns past the escapement. This takes
exactly one second in many grandfather
clocks, and produces the familiar 'tick-tock'.
Most grandfather clocks tell the time not
only by hour, minute and second hands, they
also have a deep chime. They usually chime
Grandfather clock every 15 minutes, with a different chime.

64
On the hour they chime the number of hours.
These chimes are triggered off when cogs
in the clockwork mechanism go past a
certain point.
Clocks became more and more decorative.
In fact, clockmaking became a specialized
craft. Skilled workers migrated from country
to country, as watchmaking and clock-
making became an international trade.
Cuckoo clocks which sung out the time to the
call of a 'cuckoo' arrived!
Although the pendulum made clocks
more accurate, it could not be used for
watches. A pendulum works only if it hangs
straight, and not if it lies on its side, nor if it is
moved around.
Watches that told the correct time were
developed with the help of two new inven-
tions—the hairspring and the lever escapement.
They are still commonly used in millions of
clocks and watches today, despite the modern
technology of our newest timepieces.

Cuckoo clock

65
Time Moves On

Industrialization, which began in the

eighteenth century, changed the face of the
globe. With the use of new materials like iron
and steel, new energy sources, and the
invention of many remarkable machines that
increased production, the world became a
much more complex place.
Suddenly, old leisurely ways of life were
gone. Important developments in transport
and communication like the steamship, the
automobile, the airplane, radio and telegraph
made it more urgent than ever to live life
according to the clock.
All this while, the clock had been used for
the most ordinary purposes—like getting to
school or to work on time, or catching a train.
It did not need to be accurate to within more
than half a minute or so for these every-
day things.
 With the twentieth century, time had to be
much more exact. After all, it had to keep pace
with the new science and technology that was
sweeping the modern world. Accuracy no
longer meant keeping time to the half minute
or even second. Even one-hundredth of a
second mattered in fields like astronomy!
Timekeeping had already become a science
with the introduction of chronometers for
sailors in the eighteenth century. These gave
the right time to within a very few seconds. It
was indeed a matter of life and death to have
good clocks on board the ships. In the olden
days, even for long sea voyages, there were
only crude instruments and rough tables to
find positions at sea. There were no proper
clocks. Many a ship was wrecked and sailor
drowned because of unknown locations, as
there were no reliable clocks. As your
geography book must have told you, the
intersection of latitude and longitude gives the
exact position of any place. Sailors could figure
the latitude they were in, by measuring the
position of the Pole Star. However, to find their
longitude, they needed the exact time.
Realizing the gravity of the problem, the
British Admiralty offered a prize of 20,000
pounds to anyone who made a reliable clock
that worked well at sea. It was a challenge.
John Harrison was a carpenter, but a genius
with clocks. At that time, the hairspring and John Harrison
lever escapement had not been invented. (1693-1776)

67
 He set to work to design a clock with a kind
of pendulum that would keep accurate time
through rough sea passages and changes of
temperature. After much painstaking effort,
he succeeded in making unbelievably
accurate clocks which were better than some
of our modern watches. The chronometer,
which he made in 1760, after many years of
experiments, showed an error of only 15
seconds in five months!
Harrison's clocks are still working. They are
kept in the National Maritime Museum at
Greenwich. It was a long time before anybody
could improve on them, for they were so good.
Unfortunately, the prize money was given to
him with the greatest reluctance. He was
merely given small sums to carry on his work.
It is a sad story that Harrison was an old man
by the time he received half the prize. And it
was not till matter was taken up by the
King and Parliament that he received the
full amount.
By the nineteenth century, shipping
was growing in importance because of
increased trade and transport. Chronometers
Chronometer became readily available for ships. They were
mounted in a special brackets to keep them
level on a rolling sea. They were cheap and
accurate timekeepers, and made the seas safer
for mariners.
Meanwhile, pocket watches were being
fitted into specially made bracelets or leather

68
straps. Women began to wear them like pieces
of jewellery. Wristwatches became popular
with men with the first world war, when
soldiers found it difficult to reach inside bulky
uniform jackets to check the time. All kinds of
clever, new ideas were now coming up for
timepieces.
Today, we use mainly three types of clocks
and watches—mechanical, electrical and
electronic. Mechanical clocks and watches are
spring-driven, electric clocks are powered by
electricity and electronic ones are quartz-
based. Although these are accurate
timekeepers, they can gain or lose time if run
continuously.
Most mechanical watches have to be wound
every day by hand. Some are self-winding.
They contain a swinging weight which
is geared to the coiled mainspring. When you
move your hand, the weight turns and winds
the spring. So you need not bother about
winding.
This ordinary watch is really a complicated
bit of mechanism, containing about 211
different parts. It is powered by its mainspring
which is about two feet long when straightened
out. When you wind the watch, you tighten
the coil of the mainspring, rather like a
clockwork toy.
^ , . .1 Spring-driven clock
From the mainspring, the power travels 1 . winding key 2. Mainspring
through a series of four wheels, called the | Cerrtrewhee. 4. ^cape^wheei
'train' to the delicate balance wheel. The train 7. Balance wheel

69
 moves the hands on the dial while the balance
wheel, the heart of the watch, regulates its
movements. It acts like the pendulum of a
clock, and spins back and forth steadily.
The hairspring, a coiled steel wire, no
thicker than a hair, lies inside the balance
wheel. Around the balance wheel, tiny screws
of gold or steel control the speed of the watch
by their position and weight. An escapement
wheel regulates the movement of the balance
wheel. This is the sound that causes a watch
to tick.
The wheels in the watch rest on pivots which
are in constant friction. To withstand this, the
pivots rest on tiny bits of precious stones like
ruby, garnet or sapphire, which are next only
to diamonds in hardness. These are called the
Electric clock 'jewels' of a watch, and their number is
inscribed on its outer case or dial. More jewels
mean less friction to wear out or slow down
moving parts in the watch. So it is an
indication of quality.
MERCURY Ever since man knew enough about
CELL electricity to make use of its power, he tried to
apply it to clocks and watches. The simplest
way to do this, he found, is to have electric
currents replace the weight or spring as a
source of power. Most electric clocks are
driven from the ordinary mains supply, which
BALANCE
is called 'alternating current'. Usually, the
WHEEL
current flowing in wires changes direction
Inside of an electric clock exactly 50 times a second. This keeps clocks

70
correct without any regulation. Of course, one
must beware of power cuts or even voltage
fluctuations!
Electronic watches are most popular today.
They have batteries to power them. They are
regulated not by a spinning balance wheel, but
by a vibrating tuning fork. Battery-operated
electromagnets set off the vibrations, which
are passed on to the gear-wheels, to move the
hands of the watch.
More recently, nature has been tapped to
discover a most accurate tuning fork—a
quartz crystal. It has been discovered that
when an electric current is passed through a The front of a quartz
crystal clock
quartz crystal in little waves, the crystal
vibrates at a special speed—32,768 times a
second. Clocks and watches regulated by
electric impulses with a crystal are amazingly
accurate to a second in fifty years!
Man has made an even more astounding
discovery! He has dug deeper into nature to
use the very smallest particles of matter called
atoms. Since the 1940s, scientists knew that
the electrons of atoms oscillate with a rhythm
so regular that they could be used to tell time.
Thus, a very sophisticated clock known as the
'atomic' clock has been developed, which
allows the astonishing splitting of seconds.
These clocks generally use atoms of caesium,
a silvery-white metal. Some of the latest ones
are so precise that they gain or lose less than
one second in 30,000 years! The back view

71
 Atomic clocks are being used as a standard
of time at some 50 timekeeping stations
round the world. They are also being used in
sophisticated navigation systems and space
communications. They have ushered in a
new era in the field of time measurement.
Indeed, they are better timekeepers than our
earth itself!
Different countries specialize in making
different kinds of clocks. Britain has long been
famous for its chronometers as also chime-
clock movements. The chimes of the world's
most famous clock, Big Ben, in London, have
been broadcast live for decades by the BBC.
The Black Forest of Germany was famed for
its beautiful cuckoo clocks, handcarved
in wood.
Watchmaking has been a national industry
in Switzerland, ever since the appearance of
the wristwatch. In fact the Swiss always led
in the production of high grade watches.
Special feature watches such as alarms,
calendars, automatics and chronographs were
made almost exclusively in Switzerland.
Today, over half a billion watches pour out
of the world's assembly lines every year.
Japan's Seiko group is the world's largest
timepiece manufacturer. In a 1.8 hectare plant,
1,200 robots screw parts into inexpensive
quartz crystal watches. Every two seconds a
new watch—standard or digital—pops off the
An atomic clock
assembly line!

72
 Nature too has its clocks. Fifty years ago, an
American chemist, Willard Libby, found a
natural timekeeper in everything that had
existed in the last 50,000 years. This was the
carbon-14 atom, which decays at a known rate.
Scientists can now tell the age of an Egyptian
mummy or a fossil by determining their levels
of carbon-14. Relics too could be dated to give
history more accurate dates.
What is more, there are natural cycles within
our bodies that can perceive time all on their
own. If you were stranded on an island with
no clocks around, your body would fall
naturally into a 24-hour pattern of sleep and
wakefulness, with meals thrown in at regular
intervals. This is the body's clock it work.
Biologists call it the 'circadian rhythm'. If we
break this rhythm for any period of time,
Radioactive clock—the age of
many disorders in the body can result. If you some elements like carbon is
have been on a long flight across several time measured by their decay. It takes
100 million years for the part A
zones, you will know what 'jet lag' means. You to decay; another 100 million
feel groggy and out of sorts. It usually takes years for part B and another
the body many days to readjust to a new day- 100 million years for part C.

night pattern.

73
 A Calendar

A world without clocks would surely be a

topsy-turvy place. Imagine what a world
without calendars would be like! There would
be no way of keeping track of the weeks,
months or years as they went past, or of
anything else, for that matter. You would not
have the foggiest notion of how old you were.
At school you would not be promoted after a
year, but would probably sit in the same class
always! No birthday parties, no festivals, not
even plans for vacation—after all, these are
all measured by a calendar. What a muddle
everything would be!
Did you know the word 'calendar' comes
from calendarium, the Latin word for 'account
book'? It means the division of the year, like a
set of accounts, into days, weeks and months.
A calendar does indeed regulate all our
The Great Calendar Stone affairs—at home, at work, even in the fields,

74
and it also reckons time for religious and
scientific purposes.
Calendars have been around a long while.
We saw how man found ways to measure time
long before he had invented any instruments
to do so. Early in history, he began counting
time by days, months and seasons, which were
all natural time units. He thus had the first
beginnings of a calendar.
Ancient tribes used a dawn-to-dawn
reckoning to count the days. They probably
called a number of days so many 'dawns' or
'suns'. In those far-off days, there were no
fancy calendars like the one you have hung
up in your room to keep track of the year.
They simply used sticks with crude notches
in them to count the days, or strings with Australian memory sticks

knots in them to keep a record of so many full

moons or even seasons. These were really our
earliest calendars.
The calendars used by all ancient civi-
lizations were based on natural phenomena,
or units of time such as the day, month and
year. Two kinds of calendars came into use—
the 'solar' calendar which was based on the
earth's revolution round the sun, and the
'lunar' calendar, which was based on the
movements of the moon. When you come to
think of it, the intelligence of our ancients truly
laid the foundation for our way of life today!
The Incas of South America used
Like many other things, the story of the knotted ropes known as 'quipu'
calendar began in the great civilizations that to remember things.

75
awakened nearly 5,000 years ago along the life-giving rivers of
the Middle East—in Sumer, between the Tigris and the Euphrates,
and in Egypt, along the Nile.
The ancient Egyptians introduced the use of a practical calendar
in 4,200 B.C. They were the first people to measure the year with
some exactness, although their first estimate was not quite right.
They started with a lunar (monthly) calendar based on the
appearance of the new moon every 29 or 30 days. As one year had
12 months, they calculated that this would give them a year of
360 days. It was a round figure that would have been most
convenient for calendar-making, but as the Egyptians cleverly
discovered, it was not very accurate.
The annual flooding of the river Nile on its surrounding banks
was most important to Egyptian farmers, for it brought renewed
fertility to the land. Egyptian astronomers began to time this
important event, which was celebrated as the ancient Egyptian
New Year. They were observant men. They noticed that this
flooding occurred every year when Sirius, the bright Dog Star,
An ancient Egyptian calendar—the 12 months are shown as discs.
first appeared in the early morning sky before
sunrise. The annual morning appearances of
Sirius had an interval that was a few days
longer than the 360-day Egyptian year.
The puzzled astronomers probably
scratched their heads and mused. It was
obvious that their year was a little short. Their
scientific calculations were better, based on the
more accurate 365-day solar year. The answer
lay in extending the old year by adding on an
extra five days. This was done at the end of
the year, and the extra days were set aside for
feasting and revelry during the Nile's annual

government and administration. However,

old habits die hard, and everyday life was
still based on the old lunar year. So things
remained.
Soon, even the 365-day year was seen to be
inadequate. Astronomers calculated that
there were six hours missing in a year. The
knowledge of the scholars of this period must
indeed have been tremendous!
It was around 240 B.C. that Ptolemy III,
Julius Caesar
King of Egypt, tried earnestly to set the (100 B.C.-44 B.C.)
calendar right by adding an extra year
every four years. He had come very close to
finding the right solution—but alas, it was not
to be! The powerful clergy refused to accept
his 'leap year' which would change their
long calculations and the dates of all religious
festivals, which were based on the old

77
 calendars. This same leap year was adopted
200 years later by the Roman General and
ruler, Julius Caesar.
Another highly developed civilization
flourished in Central America, quite cut
off from the rest of the world. The Mayas here
worked out their own time scale with
astonishing accuracy. Their early astronomers
achieved this by means of stars and planets.
Their calendar used a 'year' based on the
movements of the planet Venus which they
studied closely. You can see it shine brightly in
the western sky after sunset.
The Mayan astronomers drew up a 'Venus
year' which had 18 months of 20 days each.
However, they realized that this 360-day year
was not quite right, and added another five
days to each year. These five extra days were
considered to be unlucky.
The Maya people made the most elaborate
calendars which they carved on stone. Indeed,
these heavily worked stones with pictures and
hieroglyphics 3,000 years old are the pages of
their calendars for us to see even today. These
calendars were very complicated, however,
Mayan calendar
and their clumsy system of counting only
made matters more difficult. Unfortunately,
we do not know very much about this ancient
civilization which was destroyed.
The Babylonians and the Greek had their
own calendars too. Studies of cuneiform tablets
found in Mesopotamia show that its people

78

f I
reckoned time as far back as 2700 B.C.,
somewhere near the invention of writing. Like
the Egyptians, the ancient Babylonians were
drawn to the movements of the stars and the
changing seasons. They developed a year of
360 days, and divided it into 12 lunar months
of 30 days each. However, their astronomers
soon realized that this year was short by about
five days. In six years, this difference would
add up to 30 days or a full month! They solved
the problem by adding on a thirteenth month
after every six years.
The calendar which we, along with the rest
of the world, use today came from the early
Romans. They also gave us the names of the
months of the year.
It may surprise you to know that this
calendar was not as simple as it seems, but
was arrived at after a long process of trial and
error. This took many many centuries,
involved several famous personalities, and led
to fierce arguments, even riots! Ultimately,
the present day Gregorian calendar as it is
called, was designed, accurate to a day in
every 3,323 years!
The Romans were a powerful force that
ruled over much of the known world at the
height of their might. Wherever they went, the
influence of their rich culture—the Roman
alphabet, numerals and even their calendar—
was adopted by different people, far and wide.
When the Romans first took their calendar

79
 from the Greeks, it had a year of only 304 days,
divided into ten months beginning with
March. The last month of December was
followed by an uncounted winter gap. In fact,
right till the reign of Julius Caesar, the calendar
was flexible and followed no hard and fast
rules. Rulers lengthened or shortened months
at will. If somebody important wanted more
time to complete a project, he merely made
the month longer! Students must have dreamt
of lengthening the vacation months!
Ultimately, the calendar was changed so often
that it became hopelessly confusing and
meaningless, for business or administration.
A king of Rome called Numa Pompilus is
believed to have added the months of January
and February around 700 B.C., since the ten-
month year was much too short. They were
attached to the end of the year in the
uncounted winter gap, and were the new
eleventh and twelfth months. January took its
name from Janus, a two-headed Roman god
Janus who was believed to guard doors and gates.
One of his heads was said to turn back to the
past, the other towards the future. February
derived its name from the Latin 'Februarius'
which means 'to purify'. The ancient Romans
traditionally held a festival of purification in
February, the twelfth month, to prepare for the
next year. The name stuck even after the
month was shifted from twelfth to second
place in the calendar.

80
 This new calendar was more accurate, but
still not good enough for it was only 355 days
long. By Julius Caesar's reign, the dates were
three months ahead of the seasons. It is like
having Christmas fall in the spring, or Holi in
middle of the rains!
Julius Caesar took a major step to rearrange
the old calendar into something better.
He acted on the advice of a Greek astronomer
called Sosigenes, and the 'Julian calendar'
was drawn up in his honour. This was a
immense improvement on anything that
had been used before, and was used for
1,500 years.
This calendar was based on the time taken
by the earth to complete one revolution round
the sun, that is, the solar year of 3651/4 days.
Sosigenes realized that the ordinary year must
have an exact number of days to be practical.
Any leftover hours would become most
awkward. He decided on a year of 365 days
with an extra day added at the end of every
four years to correct the error. The extra long
years became known as leap years.
The number of months remained at twelve,
but since 365 is not exactly divisible by twelve,
they could not all be of the same length. Various
changes were made in the calendar to make
the months longer, so as to make the calendar
just right.
We saw how January was originally the
eleventh month, with only 29 days. Caesar

81
 pushed it to become the first month of the year
with 31 days. March, May, July, October and
December were also given 31 days each, while
the others had 30 days. However, when the
New Year was shifted to January 1, the names
of the other months were not shifted. So we
see a difference in the meanings of certain
months and their order of appearance in the
year. For instance, September comes from
'septem' meaning the number seven, but its
position in the year is ninth. October means
'octo' or eight but it is really the tenth month.
Similarly, November is from 'novem' or nine,
but it comes in at number eleven. December's
old name has stuck as well, for it is named after
'deka' or ten, but is really the twelfth month
of the year. The Romans never bothered to
alter these names.
Julius Caesar is remembered for something
else as well. He renamed the fifth month of
the earlier calendar, Quintilis, after himself. It
is called July since then and was given 31 days
in his honour. Caesar 'borrowed' one day from
February to do this, so February was left with
only 29 days. In a leap year, it was reasonable
to attach the extra day to February to give it
A page from a Medieval 30 days. It was brought forward too, to become
Christian calendar the year's second month instead of the twelfth.
The Romans named many of the other
months after gods and goddesses. March, with
its squalls and gusty winds, was named after
Mars, the Roman God of War. He was also the

82
God of Farming, and was worshipped in
March when the fields were made ready for
sowing. It was in March too that the Romans
could prepare themselves for battle again after
their long, cold winter.
The Goddess Maia, daughter of mighty
Atlas who was believed to carry the world on
his shoulders, gave her name to the month of
May. It is likely that June got its name from
the Goddess Juno, wife of Jupiter and queen
of the heavens, who rode a chariot drawn by
peacocks. Ancient Rome celebrated a festival
in her honour at the beginning of this month.
When a new emperor came to the throne,
he liked to change many things to assert his
importance. So it was with Emperor Augustus,
grand nephew of Caesar, who came to the
throne when the latter was murdered. It was
important to him to have a month named after
himself, so he renamed the old month Sextilis
as 'August' after himself. Now August had
only 30 days—a day less than July. Augustus Roman Emperor Augustus
objected strongly, and so another day was (63 b.C.-A.D. 14)
taken from February and added to August to
make it equal to July—Caesar's month!
February was thus left with only 28 days,
except in leap years when it had 29, while
August had 31.
All this juggling really did muddle up the
entire arrangement! It made three 31-day
months (July, August and September) appear
in succession. So Augustus thought hard and

83
made more changes. He reduced September to 30 days, added a
day to October to increase it to 31 days, reduced November by
one day to 30 days and finally increased December from 30 to 31
days. The important thing was to have an accurate calendar of
365 days.
It does seem extremely strange to us today that a calendar
which was used all over Europe could be changed just to flatter
an Emperor of Rome. However, we still follow the same 365-day
calendar, and its sequence of months with their lengths remain
unchanged even today.
Has it ever happened to you that a small mistake grew bigger
and bigger till it became quite serious? This is what happened
with the Julian calendar, which seemed accurate enough to begin
with. However, even after leap years had been added, things were
not quite right, for the calendar year now became long by
11 minutes and 14 seconds. This was because the earth actually
takes 365.2422 days to complete one revolution of the sun. The
correction of a full day every four years was, therefore, a little too
much, and this error added up to a full day in 128 years.
The earth's year is 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes and 46 seconds.
 By the sixteenth century, the Julian year was
ten days behind the solar year. Catholics grew
terribly concerned about the calendar's
inaccuracy. It meant that Easter would
gradually shift from being a springtime
festival into a winter one! For a long time,
people clamoured for some kind of reform.
Ultimately in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII
decided to correct matters. On the advice of
astronomer Clavius, he issued a decree
which stated that instead of having 100
leap years in every 400 years (one every four
years), there would be only 97. How would
this be done, since every year exactly divisible
by four should be a leap year? Pope Gregory
declared that the century years (1600, 1700,
1800 and so on) would be regarded as
leap years only if they were divisible by 400.
As you can calculate, 1600 and 2000 are leap
Astronomical Gregorian
years, but 1700, 1800 and 1900 are not, years years
and February has only 28 days in all A year of 365 days is a quarter-day
these years. short of the astronomical year.
Adding an extra day every fourth
This settled matters very well, for the error year brings the calendar into step.
in the Gregorian calendar was reduced to
merely 26 seconds per year, or one day in the
next 3,323 years! But the problem of the extra
days still remained.
Pope Gregory's solution was to drop ten
days from the calendar, so that October 4,
1582, was followed straightaway by
October 15,1582, to bring everything back to
its correct timing.

85
 All Catholic countries agreed to adopt the
new calendar—after all, the Pope was the
Head of the Roman Church and nobody dared
disobey him. Britain was Protestant, and kept
using the Julian calendar for almost another
century. By then, the error had increased to
eleven days. Their Parliament finally passed
an Act recommending that the use of the
Gregorian calendar. September 2 was to be
followed by September 14. The dates in
between would really vanish into thin air!
Strangely enough, many people reacted
very strongly to this change. They felt angry
and cheated out of eleven days. Maybe some
of them would miss birthdays or other
important events! There was rioting in London
and supporters of the Gregorian system were
attacked by enraged mobs. However, the anger
finally died out.
Today, all countries use the Gregorian
calendar. Russia was the last country in
Europe to adopt it after 1917 when the
erstwhile U.S.S.R. was created. It is wiser to
keep time with the rest of the world, is it not?

86
Calendars The World Over

It is difficult to discard old ways altogether,

especially if they hold some special meaning.
Although everybody uses the Gregorian
calendar, some countries still have other kinds
of calendars, which they have been
traditionally following from ancient times. The
Muslim calendar, has been retained by most
Arab countries, while the old Hindu and
Jewish calendars continue to be used for
religious purposes. So certain countries or
religions really follow two different calendars,
which can be confusing at times. Some
newspapers in these countries print their dates
according to both the calendars in use.
The Gregorian calendar, as we saw, is a solar
calendar (based on the earth's journey round
the sun, which takes a little over 365 days).
Another calendar people consult is the lunar
calendar (based on the movement of the A Muslim calendar of 1787

87
Ancient Egyptian temple calendar
moon). This was popularly used in the ancient
world, and the traditional Hindu, Muslim and
Chinese calendars are still based on it.
Since the moon takes 29.5 days to complete
one revolution of the earth, it takes 354 days
for 12 such revolutions. The lunar year of 354
is 11 days shorter than the solar year. In three
years this difference grows to a whopping 33
days! To keep the lunar year in step with the
solar year, this difficulty is solved by making
every third lunar year consist of
13 months. We call this additional month
malmas in Hindi.
Every calendar welcomes the first day of the
year as the New Year. This is one of the oldest
and gayest customs of mankind, and is
celebrated the world over. New Year's day is
a great time for parties and reunions that ring
out the old year and ring in the new one. It is a
time to make New Year 'resolutions' as well,
though these are soon forgotten! In the bigger
cities of the world, many people collect in a
big square to welcome the New Year. They
greet each other and embrace each other. In
London, Trafalgar Square is the traditional
gathering place, while Times Square is popular
in New York.
In fact, no festival has been celebrated in
such a variety of ways and on so many
different dates according to the calendars used
by different countries or religions.
We do not really know how New Year

89
celebrations first began. Some believe that the
Chinese were the first people to start them,
others claim that it was the ancient Germans,
while still others say that it was the Romans.
The Chinese celebrate two New Year days.
One is on January 1, which is New Year's day
according to the Gregorian calendar. Their
other day is reckoned by the Chinese lunar
calendar, and can fall any time between
January 21 and February 19. During this time,
there is a gay festival which lasts several days.
It is a time too for family get-togethers over
lavish meals. Children look forward eagerly
to this happy festival, for they are given 'good
luck' money in red packets.
Indonesia also has two celebrations—on
January 1, and on the Islamic New Year, a date
that varies from year to year. The Russian
Orthodox Church observes the New Year
according to the Julian calendar which places
the day on January 1.
'Rosh Hashananah' is the Jewish New Year,
celebrated about the time of the autumnal
equinox at the end of September or beginning
of October. In Vietnam, the New Year usually
begins in February. The Koreans celebrate their
New Year during the first three days of January,
while Iran celebrates it on March 21.
The people of Morocco observe the
beginning of the year on the tenth day of
Muharram which is the first month of the
Islamic year.

90
 The ancient Greeks began their New Year
with the new moon after June 21. The Roman
New Year was celebrated on March 1, till
Caesar changed it to January 1, according to
the new Julian calendar.
It is said that the ancient Germans
established a New Year festival because of the
changing seasons. The German winter set in
around mid-November, when they gathered
the harvest. It was a happy occasion when
everybody got together at the end of a time of
hard work in the fields. They looked forward
to a period of rest from work in the cold, long
winter ahead, and so made merry. Even
though it was only November, they considered
it the beginning of a new year!
In most Christian countries, the new year
now begins on January 1. In the Middle Ages
however, one calendar was used throughout Charles X
much of Europe in which each new year began (1759-1836)

on April 1. So it was celebrated as New Year's

day. People exchanged gifts and visited
friends. Being the beginning of springtime as
well, celebration was in the air.
In the sixteenth century, it is said that
Charles X, King of France, ordered people to
adopt the new reformed calendar where the
year began with January 1. Although most
people agreed to do this, there were some
stubborn ones who refused to change. They
continued to celebrate April 1 as New Year's
day, and so became the butt of jokes and tricks

91

Lunar calendar—12 lunar months
are 11 days short of a year.
by their friends and neighbours! They sent
them on fools' errands, made them gifts,
invited them to parties that were not held and
generally played lots of tricks on them on the
day. These people became known as April
Fools, and April 1 became April Fool's Day.
This became a day for practical jokes all over
the world. April Fool's Day is probably one of
the most enjoyable days in school, for you have
a good excuse to play the fool without fear
of punishment!
In India, each religious group has its own
date for beginning the year. In fact, around
thirty different calendars exist! Some are lunar,
some solar, while others are based on religion
or even astrology. You can imagine what a
great muddle our dates would be in, if all these
calendars were to be used!
In 1957, the Indian Government found a
way out. It introduced the Saka calendar as
the official calendar, and stated that only this
would be used along with the Gregorian
calendar. The Saka or Indian national calen-
dar is based on the lunar system, but the days
of this calendar correspond permanently with
the Gregorian calendar. Chaitra, which is the
first month of the year, falls on March 21 every
year, and on March 22 in a leap year. This is
the Hindu New Year.
The Sakas, incidentally, were the first
invaders from Central Asia who established
two dynasties in north-west India. Chastana
92
was the founder of the second dynasty
in 78 A.D. which marked the beginning of the
Saka era. This lasted for almost three
centuries till they fought the powerful
emperor, Chandragupta Vikramaditya, who
defeated and killed the Saka king in 388 A.D.
Since then the Saka calendar began its count
from 78 A.D. The Indian national calendar lags
78 years behind the Christian era. So if you
are born in 1982, according to the Indian
calendar your date of birth falls in 1904!
How do you celebrate the New Year? Is it
with a big bang, or do you sleep through the
end of the old year, to wake up right into the
new? It is a time for sending New Year cards
to all those near and dear to you, with wishes
for a happy year ahead. You even send cards
to casual friends, and to most people you
know. You probably receive piles of colourful
New Year cards, to put on shelves or hang from
ribbons and streamers.
The custom of sending New Year cards is
very old. Did you know that the Chinese have
been doing it for more than 1,000 years?
These cards carried the name of the visitor who
came to call (for there was no postal system
then!), but there were no greetings or
messages on them.
For people the world over, the coming of the
New Year is a symbol of starting a new life
with renewed hope for the future, and putting
old troubles behind. That is why the New Year

93
 has been greeted with joy everywhere down
the ages, in the hope that it will bring in a good,
new life.
You maybe wondering when these different
calendars actually count time from—for they
certainly did not, start together. The time
system we use in everyday life, the Gregorian
calendar, begins its count with the birth of
Christ. Everything before his time is marked
B.C. (Before Christ). Your history book is full of
dates with B.C. after them, which you probably
know by heart. Everything after the birth of
Christ is marked A.D. (Anno Domino or In the
Year of our Lore).
This practice of dating events from the birth
of Christ came into general use only in the
time of Emperor Charlemagne in the ninth
century. A mistake was made then, which
dated the birth of Christ five years later than
it actually was.
The Greeks dated their calendar from the
Charlemagne of France
Olympic Games which started in 776 B.C. The
(742-814) Romans counted time from the founding of
their city in 753 B.C. by Romulus. The Muslims
use a different calendar that begins its
count from the flight of Prophet Mohammed
from Mecca to Medina, the Hejira, in 622 A.D.
Jewish reckoning goes back to the supposed
year of creation which they calculated as
having taken place 3,760 years and three
months before the birth of Christ. As
mentioned, the Indian national calendar based

94
on the Saka era begins in 78 A.D. All these
dates are according to the Gregorian calendar.
Once man had a calendar to organize his
life, he felt the necessity of grouping days
together into periods shorter than months, for
his different activities. It was convenient to
fix different days for marketing, trade, feasts
and other activities.
In the beginning, every tenth day was
allotted to a certain task. At other places, one
day after every five or seven days was fixed
for such an activity. In Babylonia, every
seventh day was treated as a special day. This
was because of their belief in the sacredness
of the number seven which was probably
related to the seven planets. In ancient
astronomy, the name 'planet' referred to the
seven celestial bodies that were seen to move
noticeably against the background of
apparently 'fixed' stars. These included the A wood calendar used in Tyrol from
Sun, the Moon as well as the five planets, the late 17th century until the
mid-19th century. Each plate
Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. In
represents one month.
fact, a fixed day in the week was devoted to
the worship of one of these planets, which
were looked upon as gods.
The Egyptians also adopted the seven-day
system. They named the seven days after the
five planets, and the sun and the moon which
gave us the names of the first two days of the
week—Sunday and Monday. Their other
names were Mars day, Mercury day, Jupiter
day, Venus day and Saturn day.

95
 By the first century B.C., the seven-day week
had been adopted throughout the Roman
world. The present names of the weekdays are
taken from the Anglo-Saxon names of gods.
The day named after the sun is Sunnandaeg or
Sunday. The moon's day is Monandaeg or
Monday. Similarly, the day named after the
planet Mars is called Tiwesdaeg or Tuesday. It
was the Norse god of War. The day named after
Mercury is Wodendaeg or Wednesday. Jupiter's
day is Thordaeg or Thursday, the day of Thor,
the Thunder God. The day of Venus is
Friggdaeg or Friday. It comes from Freya, wife
of God Woden and mother of Thor. It is said
that she was given a day so that she would
not be jealous! Saturn's day is Saeterndaeg or
Saturday, named after the Roman God, Saturn.
One day of the week was kept for rest and
prayer. This was traditionally Sunday for all
Christians, while Jews rested on Saturday.
This was the 'Sabbath/day. Incidentally, a day
used to be counted as an interval between
sunrise and sunset. The Romans counted it
from midnight to midnight. This method is
used almost everywhere.
The calendar we use today is very accurate.
However, it is not very symmetrical with its
months of varying lengths.
There have been suggestions to make a new
'World calendar' where the present months
will remain the same but the days will be
rearranged. This has been designed by

96
dividing the year into four quarters of 91 days
each, with an additional day at the end of the
year. The first month of each quarter has
31 days and the rest of the months, 30 days
each. The additional day follows December 30
and does not belong to any month or week.
Similarly, in the leap year, the extra day
follows June 30 without being part of any
month or week. In the World calendar,
January 1, April 1, July 1 and October 1 all fall
on Sundays.
There are many advantages of such an
arrangement. In the first place, it would save
on printing new calendars every year, for
dates would always fall on the same day of
the week. If your birthday is on a Friday this
year, it would always fall on a Friday. It would
also be easier to work out school holidays,
festivals and other occasions on definite dates
for all time.
In spite of these advantages, however, the
idea of the World calendar has not become
very popular. Perhaps this is because old
habits die hard, and we are quite habituated
to the existing one.

97
Crossing Time Zones

Irina jumped up and down in excitement.

She was going to meet Grandma who lived in
faraway Vladivostock, by the Trans-Siberian
Railway from Moscow. It would be a long, long
journey of almost 10,000 km across the vast
stretches of Siberia. And it would take seven
whole days to reach! Grandma was a
wonderful cook. She had promised to make
plenty of delicious goodies for Irina when she
came. No wonder she could hardly contain her
excitement!
The 'Russia Express', as the long train
was called, travelled fast across the treeless
plains of Siberia. Yet the journey seemed
endless. It was very early in the morning—
5 o'clock according to Irina's watch, when

98
they reached Vladivostock at last. She
was usually fast asleep at this hour.
Was she not glad to be able to stretch her
cramped legs!
When Irina looked outside, she stared in
surprise. The sun was shining right
overhead, and Grandma was smiling at her
on the platform. It was lunchtime in
Vladivostock and Grandma had made lots
and lots to eat! For the time was one o'clock.
Irina just could not understand how time in
Vladivostock was different. It was eight whole
hours ahead of Moscow! It was not only her
watch which told her that, but her tummy, too.
She was not hungry for lunch in the least bit
yet! Her tummy always told her when it
was time to eat.
The other passengers in the train had
put forward their watches by one whole
hour everyday. This was because the
Russia Express had crossed eight different
time zones to reach Vladivostock from
Moscow. Therefore, it was one o'clock on
their watches now.
If youvhave ever seen for yourself how time
at any moment differs in different countries,
or even in places that are very faraway from
each other, you will understand better than
Irina why Moscow and Vladivostock have
different times.
Have you ever rung up a friend or a
relative who lives on the other side of the

99
globe, around tea time, and been surprised
to hear him sound most groggy? You
probably jerked him out of his sleep! This
happens because there is a difference of
nearly 12 hours or so between his clock
and yours.
Time, the world over, can never be the
same. Owing to the earth's rotation, the mid-
day sun from which we measure our
noontime can never be directly overhead at
all places at the same time. When it is noon
in New Delhi, it is certainly not noon in New
York! In fact, it will be nearer midnight.
Nearer home, Singapore has finished
breakfast wjien you stretch yourself out of
bed. Europe is still fast asleep.
Geographers have carefully worked out
how to measure the correct time in different
parts of the world today. The earth has been
divided into 24 time zones or belts covering
15 degrees longitude each. Longitudes are
also called 'meridians', and are imaginary
lines marked by man that run through the
the north and south poles of the earth. There
are 360 of these meridians altogether. It is
logical that places lying on the same
meridian will have the same solar time for
they face the sun together. Places that are
east or west of each other have different
solar times. The difference in solar or local
time is one hour for every 15 degrees of
longitude. This makes a time zone.

100
 You can make a simple calculation to see
how this is so. If 360 degrees of longitude
rotate completely in 24 hours, 15 degrees
will take one hour to rotate. Therefore, the
difference between one time zone and
another, 15 degrees apart, is one hour.
In those days when time zones did not
exist, the world was a hotch-potch of local
times. People set the clocks or watches
according to the mid-day sun where one
lived, so you can imagine how different their
readings must have been, even in the same
country! There were no meridians marked
out alien. Most sailors used the time at their
home ports as they roved the seas. They must^
have been surprised to find it pitch dark in
certain places when it should have been ,
morning according to their time, or light in
others when it was past their bedtime! S
—y
To get over this trouble, a meeting was When the sun is directly over the
held in Washington in 1884, where Britain prime meridian, it is noon in
Greenwich Mean Time.
and the U.S.A. urged international adoption
of Greenwich in Britain as the 0 degree
longitude or 'Prime Meridian'. A 24-hour
count could begin from here for all the
world to follow. Greenwich was chosen
because it was the site of the Royal
Observatory, set up in the reign of King
Charles II, where the first proper time
measurements were made.
All other meridians are marked east or
west of Greenwich up to 180 degrees each

101
way. Since the earth rotates from west to
east, the east is ahead in time—that is why
we call Japan in the Far East, 'the land of
the rising sun'. As we move east from
Greenwich, we add one hour for every
15 degrees of longitude we travel. When we
move west from Greenwich, we subtract
one hour from Greenwich time for every
15 degrees.
So if a place is three time zones or
45 degrees west of Greenwich, the time in that
place is three hours behind Greenwich Mean
Time or GMT, as the average solar time in
Greenwich is called. Indian Standard Time is
five and a half hours ahead of GMT.
Astronomers at the Greenwich Observatory
check their clock against the sun or a particular
star. This is done by checking the exact time
when the sun or the star crosses the meridian.
The latter method of checking with the stars
is called keeping 'sidereal' time, and it is useful
for its accuracy.
Correct time is also kept by all observatories
in other countries, with special clocks. The
Naval Observatory in Washington D.C.
determines the correct time with a quartz
crystal controlled clock, correct to 1/500th
of a second per day. They broadcast time
signals by radio.
All countries keep a track of the time of other
countries. When people travel from one
country to another, they must change the time

102
on their watches according to time differences.
Although time changes with each time
zone, countries usually keep one local time
based on a central meridian, even if they are
spread over two time zones. Otherwise,
imagine how awkward things would be if
every town or city kept its own time!
Mumbai and Kolkata are over 15 degrees
apart, but like the rest of India, they follow
Indian Standard Time which is based on the
82.5 degrees east longitude.
In case of countries with many time zones,
one local time is unsuitable. In the U.S.A.,
there are four different local times—Eastern,
General, Mountain and Pacific Time! With
due altering of time on your watch, you could
catch trains and flights all over the world with
ease, and keep appointments.
Still, a strange problem remained. Take the
case of a man who travels to London from
New Delhi. He will have to put his watch five-
and-a-half hours behind. Now just suppose
he keeps travelling west till he comes back to
where he started. He would have put his
watch behind by a whole day. If he started out
on January 1, it would be December 31 if he
travelled westwards. If he were to travel in
the opposite direction, eastwards, he would
keep putting his watch forward till he ended
up putting it forward a full day when he came
to the point he had started from. The date here
would now be January 2.

103
 It is indeed a strange situation.
You lose or gain a day depending
on which way you travel!
A way was found to avoid a
puzzling situation like this one.
An imaginary line was drawn
right down the earth's surface
from North to South pole, in the
middle of the Pacific Ocean. It
was located at the 180 degree
meridian and called the
International Dateline.
On both sides of this Date-
line are two different dates.
According to international
agreement, whenever you cross
this line the date changes. You
gain a day if you are going west
across the line, or lose a day if
you are going east. The Dateline
has some variations from the
180 degree meridian so that it
does not divide land areas or
islands. It would be most
confusing to live in a place cut
through by the Dateline—and
so have two different dates on
either side of it!
Incidentally, the word
meridian comes from the Latin
word for mid-day, or meridies.
So when the sun crosses your

104
meridian it is noon for you. East of this is
morning or 'ante meridian', meaning before
mid-day. We use the short form of 'a.m.' for
this. For example, school begins at 8 a.m. or
eight o'clock before mid-day. After mid-
day 'p.m.' is the abbreviation for 'post
meridian' when the sun has passed over the
meridian. So we say dinner is at 8 p.m., or
after mid-day. To express time from 12 noon
to 12 midnight we use p.m., and for
12 midnight to 12 noon we use a.m.
Your clock at home is numbered from 1 to
12, and you can always tell whether it is
9 o'clock in the morning or 9 o'clock at night,
by looking out of your window. This can
become confusing sometimes if somebody has
a train to catch or a meeting to attend, and we
forget to add a.m. or p.m. after the hours.
For a long time, people have been using the
24-hour method to avoid much misunder-
standings or mistakes especially in train and
flight timetables, or for important timings.
Here, the hours of the day are numbered from
one to 24 instead of two periods of 12 hours
each. After 12 noon, 1 o'clock in the afternoon
becomes 1300 hours instead of 1 p.m., 2 o'clock
becomes 1400 hours and so on. Minutes are
shown after the hour and not to the hour.
For instance, a quarter to three in the afternoon
becomes 1445. A quarter past four will become
1615 hours.
Here is a complete table for you to follow

105
when you make out your next party invita-
tions. Remember the minutes follow the hours.
0100 hrs. 1 a.m. 1300 hrs. 1 p.m.
0200 hrs. 2 a.m. 1400 hrs. 2 p.m.
0300 hrs. 3 a.m. 1500 hrs. 3 p.m.
0400 hrs. 4 a.m. 1600 hrs. 4 p.m.
0500 hrs. 5 a.m. 1700 hrs. 5 p.m.
0600 hrs. 6 a.m. 1800 hrs. 6 p.m.
0700 hrs. 7 a.m. 1900 hrs. 7 p.m.
0800 hrs. 8 a.m. 2000 hrs. 8 p.m.
0900 hrs. 9 a.m. 2100 hrs. 9 p.m.
1000 hrs. 10 a.m. 2200 hrs. 10 p.m.
1100 hrs. 11 a.m. 2300 hrs. 11 p.m.
1200 hrs. 12 a.m. 2400 hrs. 12 p.m.

106
Kaalachakra

"The wheel of time (kaalachakra) rotates

eternally through the four ages on earth..."
These four ages or yugas were called satyuga,
tretayuga, dvaparayuga and kaliyuga, the
present age. The kali era is supposed to be the
most decadent period in the system of four
yugas, and is believed to have begun on the
dawn of February 18,3102 B.C.
Our own ancestors in India were deep
thinkers and learned men. Even a long, long
time ago, when the Western civilization was
still very primitive, our philosophers had
evolved their own scientific calculations and
theories. Their profound wisdom and
knowledge is reflected in the rich literature of
our past—in ancient texts like the Vedas and
the Pur anas.
I am Time.
Here, one can read interesting accounts of
Bhagavad Gita
the creation of the universe and the beginning Chapter 10, 30

107
 of time, and trace the histories of the gods. The
precision with which our ancients, in their
own way, measured time is astonishing. Time,
they believed, stretches to infinity.
Unlike later Western thought which viewed
time as something that moves in a straight line
from past to future, Indian philosophers saw
time (kaal) as an endless cycle. This was the
kaalchakra or 'Wheel of Time' which moves
through the four ages or yugas which are
repeated for an endless period.
These ancient philosophers were thorough
in whatever they did. Time division began
with the smallest unit of time, and was
calculated up to practically infinity. According
to the Shiva Purana, which is well over 1,500
years old, the smallest unit of time in the
natural day was the time taken to wink. This
was one nimisha, fifteen of which made one
kashtha. Thirty kashthas made one kala,
while thirty kalas made one muhurta. Thirty
muhurtas constituted one complete day.
Calculations did not stop here but went
much farther. Fifteen days made one paksha
and two pakshas of the waning and waxing
moon made one month. A month was counted
Summer
from one full moon to the next. Six months
made up one ay ana and two ay anas made a year.
To chart the passage of time, the. ancient
Indian calendar-makers divided the lunar
year into 354 days, and the solar year was
spread over twelve lunar months. We still use

108
the same seasons with their old names today,
viz. vasanta or spring, grishma or summer,
varsha or the rains, sharad or autumn, hemanta
or winter, and shishir or the dews. Early poets
and sages in India wrote lilting verses about
the beauty of seasons.
Chaitra was the first month of the year,
falling in the spring-time, followed by
Vaisakha, Jyaistha, Asadha, Sravana, Bhadra,
Asvina, Kartika, Agrahayana, Pausa, Magha and
Phalguna, the last month. The Saka calendar
uses these same months.
Eventually, ancient India adopted the seven-
day week or saptaha from the West, and named
the days after the corresponding planets.
Autumn
Sunday or Ravivara was named after the sun.
Monday or Somvvara was named after the
moon. Mangalvara or Tuesday was in honour
of Mars. Wednesday which was named after
Mercury was Budhvara, while Thursday was
named Brihaspativara after Jupiter. Friday or
Shukravara was dedicated to Venus, and
Saturday or Shanivara was named after Saturn.
Everything in ancient India had a religious Spring

or symbolic significance—for the gods ruled

every part of life. The solar year was considered
to equal one complete day of the gods. The
period of the sun's ascent into the northern
hemisphere was considered to be daytime for
the gods, while its descent into the southern
hemisphere constituted their night. Thirty
solar years equalled a month for the gods. In

109
 this way, 360 solar years made a divine year.
Now you can imagine how old the gods
must be!
It was on the basis of these divine years that
ancient Indian philosophers divided time into
four ages or Yugas.
The four yugas formed a mahayuga of
12,000 divine years, which equals 43,20,000
solar years. One thousand mahayugas made a
kalpa. The Puranas tell us that thousands of
such kalpas have come and gone, of which
there is no record. Such figures are really too
vast for us to be able to think about clearly!
Brahma Indian lore states that one kalpa measures
one day in the life of Brahma, the Creator. The
subsequent night is equally long. Brahma's life
span is considered to be 100 years long. By this
reckoning, it stretches to practically infinity!
Of these 100 years, only half are said to be over.
Our ancestors further believed that our
universe has been created in one day of
Brahma's life, and will end in one night.
Remember, this enormously long day spans
1,000 mahayugas or 43,20,000,000 years! The
night of destruction is equally long.
Furthermore, one Brahma is said to be
followed by 1,000 such Brahmas. Then dawns
the Age of Vishnu. One thousand Vishnus
are followed by the Age of Shiva, and at the
end of 1,000 Shivas alone will come the end
of creation.
Vishnu Yet, this still does not mean the end of time—

110

v
for only a fraction of the Creator's energy is
claimed to be used! Time has no beginning
and no end. It is eternal.
In the face of such immense time scales, our
months and even years seem tiny. By their
intricate calculations, our ancestors did
manage successfully to show what a tiny
speck man is, compared to the enormous
cosmic distances of space and time around.
The ancient Indian calendar continued with
some refinements. With the influence of Greek
and Mesopotamian astronomy and astrology,
these refinements were introduced for casting
horoscopes and making predictions.
Shadow clocks, sundials, water-clocks and
sandglasses were some of the instruments used
to keep time in ancient India. A typical water-
clock was made of a small pot with a hole in
the bottom which floated in a large tub of
water. The time taken for the pot to fill was
one ghati, or 24 minutes. Incidentally, the Hindi
word for clock or watch, ghadi, is derived from
ghati. Ghadi is also used as a word for time
Mahesh
measurement.
In the eighteenth century, an observatory
was built at Jaipur which was equipped with
expensive astronomical instruments in
marble and precious metals. A number of
sundials were also built here, including the
'Samrat Yantra'. This huge structure, built by
Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II, is the world's
biggest sundial. It has a vertical height of

111
Jaipur observatory
36 m and a gigantic gnomon 27 m. This casts
a shadow so big that one can follow its
smallest movements very easily. This sundial
is aligned exactly with a north-south meridian,
and is accurate to within two seconds.
Today, we have not lost touch completely
with our past. Indian festivals are still
celebrated according to the calendars devised
long ago, and, as we earlier saw, the Indian
Government uses both the Gregorian and the
ancient Saka calendars.

113
No Beginning, No End

Man has come on an amazing journey

from the distant shadow clock to the atomic
clock of today, accurate to a millionth of a
second! He has indeed triumphed oyer the
measurement of time. You must remember
however, that all these comprise earth
measurements. Time counts in the universe are
vast and quite different.
Suppose you had a Martian friend who was
born on the same day as you, and you are
twelve years old today. How old would he be?
Twelve years old, of course, you would say; and
according to the time reckoning on the earth,
you would be quite right. But on Mars,
conditions would differ.
You saw how an earth year of 365 days is
measured by our journey round the sun. A
picture of the solar system will show that the
nine planets revolve in varying distances

114
 round the sun. Mercury is its closest neighbour, while Neptune
and Pluto are an enormous distance away from the sun. So planets
do not orbit it in the same time. The farther away they are, the
longer is their journey. They spin at different speeds too, so the
lengths of their days vary.
Mars, in fact, takes 687 earth days to complete one revolution
round the sun. It is farther away from the sun than earth, and
moves slower in its path. Therefore, 687 earth days make up a
Martian 'year'. You can figure out now that your Martian friend
is about six Martian years old!
It is obvious that our measurements of time cannot be used on
other planets. You would need a different calendar altogether.
If you had another alien friend, living on far-off Uranus, he
would be an old, old man by earth years when he reached his first
birthday. For Uranus takes 84 earth years to go round the sun once.
And friends at the outer edge of the solar system, on Neptune and
Pluto, would not have a birthday at all! (We are assuming a life
span like ours on earth). Neptune takes 165 earth years to circle

vho was
you are
dhebe?
say; and
te earth,
i Mars,

days is
! sun. A
that the
[stances
the sun. Its day is less than 15 hours, so there
are 90,000 days to Neptunian year! Pluto, with
its vast orbit of 248 earth years, spins so fast
that its day is barely seven hours long. So it
has even more days to the year. It is unlikely,
however, that life exists anywhere else in the
solar system but on our planet.
As we know more and more about outer
space, questions keep cropping up regarding
the age of the earth, of the universe and indeed,
of time itself. For us even one year seems a
long time! It is difficult to understand how
very old the earth is. Till a century ago, this
was a very big mystery. Scientists tried to
unravel this mystery in some interesting ways.
Some tried to estimate the amount of salty
chemicals carried down to the oceans by
rivers. Geologists tried to figure out the earth's
age by land and ocean changes. Many
conclusions were guesswork, but finally, not
very long ago, scientists came close to solving
this mystery.
An exciting discovery enabled them to
estimate that the earth has been around a
good 4.6 billion years or so. They discovered
too, that life on earth started about 570 million
years ago. The first 345 million years marked
the development of simple marine life. Giant
reptiles like dinosaurs were the earth's
inhabitants for the next 160 million years,
and mammals appeared in the subsequent
65 million years. Man appeared on the earth

116
about one million years ago. However, we
know only 5,000 years of his history.
These vast figures have been worked out by
studying a substance called uranium, which
is found in some rocks. Uranium is a radio-
active material—which means it is always
letting off energy, rather like a bulb emits light.
Uranium is converted to lead at a steady rate
over millions of years. So the amount of lead
in rock samples enables scientists to estimate
the age of the earth.
If you find all these time distances mind-
boggling, what about things older than even
the earth, which existed before it did? To solve
a good mystery one must go further back and
further into time to look for clues. Can we
reach the beginning of time itself?
The exploration of the universe, conducted
by astronomers, physicists and cosmologists
is one of the greatest adventures of the
twentieth century. Their findings in the last
few years have revolutionized our knowledge
and understanding of the universe.
'Cosmology' is the study of the universe at
large, its beginning, its evolution and its
ultimate fate. Cosmologists make use of
information from giant telescopes, space
probes and large computers that carry out
their intricate calculations. Much of
cosmology is mathematics, and cosmological
ideas can be expressed in terms of equations,
using paper and pencil and the mind alone.

118
 Scientists have developed various kinds of
optical and radio telescopes to study distant
stars. Incidentally, the word 'telescope' is
taken from the Greek word 'teleskopein'
which is a combination of 'tele' meaning 'far'
and 'skopein' meaning 'to see'. So a telescope
is an instrument that helps us to see far off
objects clearly. The Italian scientist Galileo
made the first successful telescope to study
heavenly bodies.
The Milky Way was the name given to the
band of white light which stretches across the
sky. Galileo discovered that this band of light
comes from a vast collection of faint stars
which the naked eye cannot see. Our sun, its Galileo invented a telescope with
planets and the nearby stars also belong to this lenses, and studied the moon,
planets and the sun.
collection of a hundred thousand million stars,
held together by the gravitational force. This
cluster of heavenly bodies is called 'galaxy'—
Greek word for 'milk'. The whole galaxy is
spinning round its own centre. It takes between
220 and 230 million years to go round once!
This period has been called the 'cosmic year'.
Clearly, beyond our galaxy lie millions of
other galaxies which appear to us as merely
dim, misty patches. Who knows, there maybe
more which we have not detected as yet! All these
stars must have surely come from somewhere
and at some time. Scientists believe they were
made from dust and gases. When and where
did these come from, in the first place?
To grasp cosmic evolution, one must probe

119
at least several billion years back in time by
studying objects billions of light years away
Equipped with big telescopes today, astro-
nomers can look back billions of light years
into space. They are actually gazing far back
into time! While looking at light from a far-
away galaxy, they are actually seeing it as it
was millions of years ago.
There have been different theories about the
origin of the universe. Modern astronomers
believe that the universe came into existence
at one particular moment with the 'Big Bang'—
explosion in space. The debris and blazing
gases from this violent explosion were thought
to be flung, far out in space. The cooling of
these scattered parts over several million years
gave birth to galaxies whose matter has been
expanding continuously. Our solar system
was also believed to have been formed like
this. The lava of the earth solidified after a vast
period of time into our familiar world.
Scientists found evidence that the entire
universe is evolving and expanding. The rate
at which galaxies seem to be simply flying
apart tells them the date when all matter in
the universe set out on its journey.
"We were able to show that the matter in
the universe must have been infinitely
compressed about 15 thousand million years
ago," says British astrophysicist, Stephen
Hawking, author of the best-selling book,
A Brief History of Time.

120

v
 • And before that? "Time as we measure it
simply did not exist," he comments. The other
side of time is a dark mystery, greater than any
mystery story you have read.
Hawking is famous for his intensive
research into certain dark areas in space,
called 'black holes' or collapsars ('collapsed
stars'). These are now seen as the remains or
'ghosts' of very large, 'dead' stars. Within a
black hole, the gravitational attraction is so
great that anything that goes in cannot come
out. Not even light!
How does this happen? At some stage in a
large star's life, its nuclear fuel is exhausted.
It becomes unstable and gravitationally begins
to collapse inwardly on itself. The star shrinks
after nuclear activity has ceased, to become a
'white dwarf'. In this process the star is
reduced to one hundredth of its original size.
Its gravitational pull becomes about 10,000
times more than the gravitational force
of the original star. This dense star gives off
little light.
The fate of a white dwarf is decided by
what is now known as the 'Chandrasekhar Subrahamanyan Chandrasekhar
(1910-1995)
Limit', which is the maximum mass possible
for its stability. This was named after the
Indian astrophysicist Subrahamanyan
Chandrasekhar who formulated it in 1930.
He showed it was impossible for a white
dwarf to be stable if its mass is greater than
1.44 times the mass of the sun.

121
 The star contracts further, forcing the
electrons and protons of its atoms to combine
to form neutrons. The star now becomes a
'neutron star'. Its size is reduced to a five-
hundredth part of the dwarf star and
gravitational attraction becomes about
100,000,000,000 times the original star. As the
light given off by the neutron star decreases,
its energy and its size reduces further. At some
stage even its neutrons are crushed out of
existence and it becomes a 'black hole'. Within
the black hole, matter may be compressed to
a point of zero volume and infinite density.
This is called a 'singularity' and it forms the
core of a black hole. All laws of physics break
down at a singularity.
If this puzzles you, do not worry. It is only
in the last few decades that scientists
themselves have begun to understand the
origin and nature of the universe!
Even stranger to understand is the way a
black hole behaves, drawing everything into
Black hole
itself like a bottomless pit. Falling into a black
hole is one of the horrors of science fiction. Yet,
scientists today have concluded that a black
hole is fact rather than fiction. Its great gravity
drags anything that passes close enough, and
tears it to shreds. These fragments fall into the
black hole and can never come out. For, to get
away from its extremely intense gravity, the
speed needed or the 'escape velocity' must be
greater than the speed of light. Scientists are

122
quite sure now that nothing can travel faster
than the speed of light. Therefore, if light
cannot escape, nothing else can. No wonder it
seems so black! This invisible black hole can
be detected only by its gravitational force. It
closes time and space within itself and cuts
itself off from the rest of the universe. Light
and even time are said to circle endlessly in a
closed loop.
A key ingredient to understanding the
universe today, astrophysicists have found, is
the union of space and time. In fact they call
this 'space time'. In everyday life, space and
time seem to be quite different things. You
know that space extends in the three
dimensions of length, breadth and height. We
can see where things are located in space and
travel through it more or less at will. But
although we know what time is, it is almost
impossible to describe. In a sense it does have
a direction from past to present and future,
but we can neither look into the past nor the
future, and we certainly cannot move through
time at will.
As long ago as 1905, German physicist
Einstein was suggesting that instead of
thinking of space and time as two separate
entities, they should be thought of as different
parts of a single unified whole, 'space-time'.
His special theory of relativity combines the
two in the same set of equations and shows
they can be stretched or squeezed.

123
 Speed is a measure that relates space and
time. Speeds are always in the form of miles
per hour or kilometres per second and so on.
You cannot have one without the other when
you talk of speed.
Earlier theories have now been measured
and confirmed to great precision in very many
experiments. There have been many
fascinating conclusions. Einstein's special
theory of relativity had suggested that if an
object were to travel at or near the speed of
light, it would appear to undergo some
astonishing changes. If you could watch a
spaceship travelling at the speed of light, you
would see three effects. lime would pass more
slowly on the spaceship in relation to time on
the earth. The spaceship would appear to
increase in mass. It would also appear to
decrease in length. Later experiments
confirmed that space and time are indeed
Spaceship
warped at high speeds.
Moving objects also increase in mass the
faster they go. But the speed of light always
remains constant. Objects that travel at the
speed of light experience 'time dilation' or
stretching of time, and shrinking of length.
Time is thus intimately related to motion
and space.
Imagine what time dilation could actually
mean! In the distant future, astronauts
manning spaceships that travelled at the speed
of light, might return home to find their

124
children older than themselves! For time
would have passed more slowly for them than
for people on earth. And if time dilation really
proves possible, it could be used for all kinds
of important things. Space laboratories
travelling at the speed of light could be used
for elaborate experiments. Exploration into
deep space would become possible, for long
space journeys at high speed could be easily
finished in the lifetime of one space crew.
However, light travels at the fantastic speed
of a hundred and eighty-six thousand miles a
second! Today's space probes move at a mere
seventy miles a second or so, and it seems
unlikely we could reach the terrific speed of
light. But who knows, science fiction could
indeed become fact one day!
Very slowly, the implications of all these
amazing discoveries began to dawn on
cosmologists. The universe, they realized,
might behave like the biggest black hole of
them all, where everything was held together
by gravity, and space-time formed a self-
contained loop!
There was one big difference. Black holes
pull matter inwards, towards the singularity.
The universe on the other hand expands
outwards fom the Big Bang. Indeed, it is like a
black hole inside out. Einstein's equations, the
general theory of relativity, had said that the
universe could not be static but must expand
or contract. Observations showed that the

125
universe is indeed expanding. The universe
must have emerged from a point of infinite
density, a singularity, about 15 billion years
ago, his equations show. This is sometimes
referred to as the 'cosmic egg'—a completely
self-contained ball of matter, energy, space and
time. It was indeed a superdense black hole
before the Big Bang. This was perhaps the
beginning of time!
Having gone back to the beginning,
cosmologists now looked ahead to the future.
The universe is thought to reach a certain size
after which expansion of the galaxies will stop
and they will start contracting. The Universe
will then collapse back into the final
singularity, termed the 'Big Crunch'. This is
taken to be the end of time.
It has been calculated that the 'edges' of
time and space may be removed to prove
a universe with no boundaries at all. It is
simpler to understand this rather complicated
idea by representing the universe as a globe.
Imagine the Big Bang as a spot on its surface
drawn at the North Pole. As time passes, we
imagine the lines of latitude drawn farther
and farther away from the North Pole getting
bigger all the way to the equator. This shows
expansion of the universe. From the equator
down to the South Pole, the lines of latitude
decrease, corresponding to the universe
shrinking back into nothing, as time passes.
There is thus no discontinuity in time or

126
space. At the North Pole, there is no direction
north for everything points south. This is
because of the geometry of the curved surface
of the earth. Similarly, at the Big Bang, there
was no time past, but everything lay in the
future. This is simply because of the geometry
of the curved surface of space-time. The entire
package of space and time, matter and energy,
is self-contained.
It is like walking a little away from the
North Pole due north. In a little while you will
be walking south. In the same way, let us go
back to where we began. Suppose you
clambered aboard a Time Machine and pressed
the 'Reverse' button. Z...a...a...p... You would
travel backwards in time, all the way to the
Big Bang. A moment later, you would move
towards the future even though you had not
changed the controls of your machine!
The gaps in our understanding of the laws
and forces governing our physical world are
still enormous. The challenge to solve the
riddle of time has only just begun. It has taken
us to the threshold of exciting mysteries of
existence and the unknown future. One day,
perhaps, we will redefine our concept of time.
Till such time, the fascinating story of time
cannot end. The limits are set only by the limits
of the human imagination. No doubt, time
alone will tell!

127
 A world without time! It would be a chaotic
place to live in. Man has been trying ever to
reckon time. He watched nature's clocks—the
rising and setting of the sun, changing of the
seasons, growth of a baby and mutation in all
creation. From shadow sticks to sundials to water-
clocks to the present day clocks that are accurate
to one-millionth of a second and further—it is
indeed the story of time. A most significant idea
that has resulted through untiring
research is the concept of time-space-continuum
as an indivisible unity.
Time remains a scientific mystery!

E 377
ISBN 81-7011-891-3