⪮ Good Morning
Syncing with the Sun
Without a paper calendar to keep track of the days, it would be much too easy to drift a few days here or there. Before paper records, people must have kept track in other ways. Although it was probably less important to know the exact date, as long as you had milestones and events to recalibrate.
The moon phases as well as the summer and winter solstices are ideal points of chronological reference. There would just need to be monuments built to track them. 🤔
"Breathing" lights
US patent US6658577B2, Breathing status LED indicator, is most commonly found as the pulsing light indicating when older Apple laptops charged.
The patent (seemingly) isn't being used for charging lights anymore, but the same rhythm can be found in the Apple Watch's Mindfulness app.
The design simulates slow breathing, putting you at ease. It is also anthropomorphizing your devices to feel less machine-like and more alive.
A closer look at Apple's breathing light by Avital Pekker (https://avital.ca/notes/a-closer-look-at-apples-breathing-light) is a very deep dive into the actual mathematics to make it feel right.
Sometimes it is the little things that make the biggest difference.
It's too easy to overlook the little details and underestimate the effort.
Knocker-Upper
Before alarm clocks, you'd pay someone to bang on your door or window to make sure you woke up to get to work on time! This continued in the UK up until the 01970s!
Sí an Bhrú
Newgrange (Sí an Bhrú) is an exceptionally grand passage tomb found in County Meath, Ireland. It was built during the Neolithic Period, around 3200 BC, making it older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids.
Every winter solstice, the sun's rays illuminate the passage and chamber through an exactly aligned opening called a roof-box.
Candle Clocks
Candles with nails inserted at specifically marked heights acted as an alarm clock. As the candle burned down, the nails would fall to a metal plate below and make a sound.
https://www.nspirement.com/2021/08/30/candle-clocks-first-alarm-clocks.html