Ways of time-measurement?

[Sauron999]

How did the Hobbits or the people in Middle-Earth measure the time of the day? We know that the Shire had its calendar, and that in Gondor they went after the rising of the sun.
But how did they know what an hour was ?
I'm sorry if this has come up already, but I have been away very long.
Does the book say that they used hour glasses or sth like that?
I'm ready to learn, so teach me please smilies/smile.gif

[Voronwe]

They had clocks. At least, Bilbo did, as this quote from The Hobbit shows:

'If you had dusted the mantlepiece, you would have found this just under the clock,' said Gandalf

I can't recall any other mentions of clocks being used anywhere else in Middle Earth. A clock in the Shire was probably considered a rare luxury, affordable only by richer hobbits such as Bilbo.

[Sharkû]

Or an anachronism smilies/biggrin.gif

[Voronwe]

Indeed. But if so, why would the translator of 'There and Back Again' - a certain Professor Tolkien if I remember correctly -feel the need to introduce such an oddity? Did he somehow believe that a mantlepiece would not be a mantlepiece without a clock?

[Selmo]

When the Hobbits needed to know the time of day they looked at the sun and guessed.

They had no need for acurate time measuring.
There were no religeous services to be observed at particular times. That need led to the developement of clocks in our own Middle Ages. There were no trains running to a timetable, the thing that led to the standarisation of time across nations in our Nineteeth Century. They had no science that needed precise timing for research.

Hobbits didn't worry about time. The got up when the sun rose, they ate when they were hungry, they went to sleep when they were tired and they were content.

[Errand-Rider Karigan]

Yet a mention of time is made by Gandalf in the Fellowship of the Rings, book two, the first chapter, Many Meetings:


"Where am I, and what is the time?" cried Frodo, sitting up. There was an old wizard, sitting in a chair by the open window.

"In the House of Elrond, and it is ten o'clock in the morning" said a voice...

So clearly time means something.

[Legolas]

The Lord of the Rings

Bilbo took out the envelope, but just as he was about to set it by the clock, his hand jerked back, and the packet fell on the floor.

`About a couple of hours after daybreak,' said Sam, `and nigh on half past eight by Shire clocks, maybe. But nothing's wrong.`

There definitely were clocks.