Millennials(born between 1981–96) envy Gen Z(97-’12) and Gen Alpha(‘12+) on how they use the mobile phone, which is such a pervasive device, that was only part of science fiction movies when millennials were growing up.
Gen Z+ generation take Internet and mobile phones for granted. They get frustrated when a signal that is supposed to be send to space, and be transmitted to thousands of miles across Atlantic take a little more than a few seconds extra!
Well that’s the usual story everyone talks about. Have you wondered what changed so big in millennial generation that they take it for granted?
Yes, it’s time. To be precise, its the way in which we measure time.
16th century was well known for advancement in the field of music. Greatest composers, and many musical instruments gave birth at this time.
The most important devise in today’s music is a simple metronome. A tiny device that keeps track of time, without which literally there is no rhythm, and hence very difficult to play/compose music.
Around the same time, Vincenzo Galilei, an Italian music composer and a music theorist, trained his kids to learn music.
Galileo being the son of Vincenzo, with his understanding of music, and a curious mind discovers that the lamp in the churches were swinging in even time, irrespective of the length, and though he could use that to measure time for his musical instruments.
Little did he know that it would be an historic way of measuring time in the future. It gave a alternate way of measuring time from the traditional way: using Sun which was followed for centuries in the past.
During the early 19th century, literally no one needed a way to measure time to the split second accuracy; it was simply not useful so no one bothered about it too.
A major change came after the invention of steam engines, which gave raise to passenger trains that was running cross country in the US of A. That was when the actual need of time really came into existence.
It is said every State in the US followed around 20–30 different times around 1930s. Also, it used to cost $40 per time piece when it was launched, which eventually was selling for $3-$5 a decade later. ( The same phenomenon we see for the mobile phones today)
Pendulums had a problem. Since there is no energy source to keep ticking, the clocks ended up showing a margin of error for every day! And, they have to be corrected manually.
These problems along with the invention of quartz crystal; which demonstrated piezoelectric effect, that ticks ‘x’ number of times when fed with an energy source (battery), drastically improved the way in which we measured time.
Remember the time in 80’s; Watches were a fad, and the birth of digital watches especially the ones from China flooded the World markets. All, after the invention of Quartz crystal.
The current quartz crystal is designed in such a way that it oscillates exactly 32,768 times in a second. ( For the geeks out there, you should have figured out it’s 2¹⁵. And, they use 15 flip-flops gates, to count it as one second).
Every piece of digital hardware that we use now, is time-synchronized to Milli-second accuracy, without which, there are no computers, mobiles phones, (wikipedia, facebook, Insta, PUBG, medium etc.,)!
In the meantime, Marie Curie who was working on radio-active elements, along with her husband Pierre Curie, invented a different type of clock. While we are used to clocks that tick for a second, they invented clocks that ticks for nano-seconds, micro-seconds, minutes, hours, years, million years, billion years, etc. (Confused?!)
They understood the radiation phenomenon in atoms, and discovered every element radiated at different speeds, which gave raise to several different clocks.
For eg., Carbon has an half life of 5000 years. Which basically means if you keep “x” amount of Carbon for 5000 years, half of it will be radiated and morphed to argon. Using the quantity available in the rocks/bones etc, we were able to determine the age!
Only after this, were we able to study, and understand Darwins’ evolution theory eventually understand about earth, and of course our own self.
On the other hand, we have atomic clocks, that measure time that oscillates 9 billion, 192 million, 631 thousand, 770 times in a second. And, we have 400 atomic clocks across the world that syncs time to the split second accuracy.
How many times have we wondered when you were ordering food in your favorite food-delivery app, which finds your current location, uses the time from 3 of these atomic clocks, only to understand the difference in time and, eventually using the difference to calculate the exact location anywhere on earth!
If that is not effing marvelous, you can go back to the caves!
Well, it’s time to scroll your Social Feed!
Until Next Time.
(PS: Topic was inspired on reading “How we got to now” By Steven Johnson, and Richard Dawkins “Greatest Show on Earth”; Cheers to them).