Telling the time has been an important part of mankinds history since time began. In the early days man measured the seasons by the position of the sun in the sky. This was soon captured to measure the time of the day by using sundials.
Sundials were first introduced around 3500 BC. They were formed by allowing the shadow of the sun to point to the hour of the day.
Sundials were decorative and are now very collectible but their practical function was limited. Sundials rely on the sun so if it was a rainy day or night, the sundial was of no use as a time keeper.
A more practical invention for time keeping was created around 1400 BC in Egypt. This was the water clock. The oldest documentation of this is on the tomb of Amenemhet, a 16th Century BC Egyptian Court Official. Water Clocks had the advantage that they could measure the time of day during both the day and the night.
Neither the sundial or the water clock were that accurate. It took many years after the invention of the water clock before the pendulum clock was invented. The first pendulum clock was invented by Christian Huygens in 1656. The pendulum clock allowed minutes to be recorded as well as hours.
In 1920 the quartz crystal clock was invented. These types of clocks are much more precise than the pendulum clock.
Nowadays, digital clocks are extremely accurate and we now have clocks and watches which can perform all sorts of time measurement from dates to seconds of the hour.
However, no matter how accurate modern clocks are, there is something special about antique clocks such as grandfather clocks and other pendulum clocks. It is not surprising that despite all of the modern features of digital and quartz clocks, that the pendulum clock is still desirable as both a practical and collectible item.