The Technology and Reality of Time Keeping Considered

Although we use the term time-keeping to describe watches, clocks, sun dials and other devices used to reckon the passage of time, we can never truly keep it. Time, like Ol' Man River, belongs to no one and just keeps on rolling along.

Time and the passage, measurement of and attempts to control and "master" it has always been a subject of fascination to we human beings. It is important to remember that time is not really an object. It is a human-created concept that has common utility but can create the illusion that we can somehow control it or use it as we will.

The study of time and time-keeping is called Horology and has been around, initially without the scientific sounding name, since people began to attempt to track the passage of time in earnest some 5-6,000 years ago.

The earliest known device was probably the vertical obelisk, built by the ancient Egyptians, that was used to track time by the moving shadow cast by the movement of the sun. This idea was later fine-tuned, over a period of many centuries, into smaller sun-dials. Whether measure with reference to the sun or stars of defined in sections by clocks, dripping water or sand, or high-tech atomic devices, time is simply not available to be captured but only reckoned.

From that time-keeping device to the most advanced Atomic Clocks (the NIST F-1) of today which are incredibly accurate and serve as reference points for time-keeping around the world, one thing remains constant. No matter how simple or sophisticated the device, time has never been successfully 'kept' by anyone nor will it ever be. This is because time is not a thing or object: It is an idea, a concept of human construction.

Calling watches and clocks 'time-keeping' devices is simply a commonly accepted misnomer. They don't "keep" time at all - They simply measure it into units for our convenience. Time is kept track of but never really kept.

A favorite subject of traditional science fiction has been time travel. The idea of moving through time, as though it was a piece of geography to be traversed, has fascinated people for centuries. From HG Wells's "The Time Machine" to "Mr. Peabody's Improbably History," the subject has been pondered, explored and imagined in both serious historical context as well as to exploit the comic possibilities. In every instance, it has always been, is now and will likely ever be fiction.

Watched, measured and used to organize the business of human existence - Yes. Being able to save, redirect or somehow keep it - Never. The ability to contain, store, travel through or distort time is the subject matter of illusionists, pseudo-scientific con men and science fiction, not of real life.

None of the aforementioned is to be confused with the term "Keeping time" when it is applied in the context of responding to and/or maintaining the rhythm of music.

We humans have an interesting and entirely predictable drive to feel that we can control things. Keeping track of the passage of time is as close as we can come to mastering a concept we created to order history and to measure out the moments and epochs of our lives.