History's First Alarm Clock Ingeniously Featured Only 2 Components

A candle clock is so simple, and thereby so ingenious, that anyone could assemble it from the most basic of components: a tall wax candle and nails. In fact, you don't need nails, exactly just anything that can pierce the wax. Nails are good because they're heavy and guaranteed to promptly fall when the

A candle clock is so simple, and thereby so ingenious, that anyone could assemble it from the most basic of components: a tall wax candle and nails. In fact, you don't need nails, exactly — just anything that can pierce the wax. Nails are good because they're heavy and guaranteed to promptly fall when the wax burns low enough. And if you've got a little metal pan or something under the candle, the nails are going to make a big clack and wake you up. Boom: instant alarm clock. And if your tinker enough with the placement of the nails and the thickness of the candle — the candle's burn rate — you've got an immensely practical, profoundly useful tool for everyday use, especially if the whole system can be standardized. And if you don't have nails, you can still track time.

This is exactly what happened, even as early as the first recorded candle clock in history in China. That clock, referenced in a 1,500-year-old poem by You Jiangu, describes a regimented array of candles used to keep time. He used six candles of the same circumference, length, and weight, the latter of which denotes the wax's composition and burn rate. Each candle was 12 inches tall. He didn't use nails to keep time — metal is harder to get by, so nails came later — but etched hash marks into the wax. Each hash mark measured 20 minutes. 

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