Alarm Clock

               

               There in one invention some of us could probably do without - the alarm clock. But even if we don't like bieng wakened out of a sound sleep by its loud ringing. we must admit that it does get us up in time for work or school.

                The first alarm clock woke its owner up with a hot foot! The first alarm clock was a really nastydevice - a candle. Medieval monks would keep a lit candle between their toes before taking a nap. when the flame reached their feet, they knew it was time to get up! Neddless to say , this 'hot-foot-alarm-clock' didn't catch on outside the monasteries.

               As the years passed, many clocks were equipped with gongs and bells, but none with an alarm that would wake a person automatically at a given hour. Finally, in 1787 Levi Hutchins, a 26 years-old New Hampshire clockmaker, came up with a solution, He liked to wake up every morning bright and early at 4 a.m . But at that hour, there was no sun streaming in his window to wake him, So some day he overslept. But one day, Hutchins decided to rebuild one of the clocks on his self with an alarm. He built a pine cabinet and put the inner working of a large brass clock inside it.He then inserted a gear that would be tripped when the minute hand of the clock struck 4.00. The gear would active a bell get it ringing. The alarm clock worked and Hutchins was upand at work when he wanted to be. Oddly enough, hutchins never patented his invention or went into the nusiness of manufacturing alarm clocks. But he lived to ripe old age of 94, Proving that 'early to bed, early to rise' makes a man at least healthy... if not wealthy and wise!