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The Earliest Clocks
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Did you know that it wasn’t until recently that we found a need for knowing the time of day. As far as we can determine, it was approximately 5000 to 6000 years ago that civilizations in the Middle East and North Africa began to make clocks.
With the trappings of civilisation - bureaucracies, formal religions, and other social activities, these cultures evidently found they had a need to organize their time more efficiently.
The Sumerian culture appears to have been the first to create a clock but their design was lost without the knowledge being passed on. The Egyptians appear to have been the next to formally divide their day into (something like) hours. They used Obelisks (more commonly recognised as monuments) which were built as early as 3500 BC. The moving shadows of the Obelisks operated as a type of sundial.
Obelisks also showed the year’s longest and shortest days when the shadow at noon was the shortest or longest of the year. These days were often significant from a religious point of view.
Now when did the first alarm clock appear? Was it really done by an inventive Egyptian guy smacking a huge gong on the side of an obelisk? The answer to that question will have to wait for another day. 
Hello Clock Watchers!
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The first practical cesium atomic frequency standard clock was built at the National Physical Laboratory in England in 1955 - go the Poms!
In collaboration with the U.S. Naval Observatory, the frequency of the cesium reference was established or measured relative to astronomical time.
In actuality NIST built the first atomic clock in 1949. This was based on ammonia, but the problem was its performance wasn’t much better than the existing standards.
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