How to Spot a Psychopath

Behold, Marshall Damerell's water clock!

Or, if you'd prefer something a little more shed-ish...

...here are a couple of Tim Hunkin's shots at the idea.

(Tim's a little over-broad in the above video when he says that accurate timekeeping has only really been important since the advent of the railways. Accurate timekeeping for the great majority of people was, indeed, not terribly important until a surprisingly long time after the Industrial Revolution. But accurate timekeeping for ships has been important ever since humans first managed to make boats physically able to sail far from shore. You can tell what your latitude is without knowing the time, but without an accurate clock you can't estimate your longitude, unless there's a known island or coastline in sight.)

As regular readers know, Tim Hunkin was responsible for The Secret Life Of Machines, which you can, and should, legally download for free.