Who Invented the Alarm Clock?

As early as the 5th century B.C., the Greek philosopher Plato invented an ingenious water clock that not only accurately measured the passage of time, but also sounded a whistle to wake him for his morning lectures. The Buddhist monk Yixing built the first water-driven mechanical clock around A.D. 700 and Chinese tower clocks may have inspired the first European mechanical clocks, which appeared in the 13th century. The classic tabletop alarm clock with a clattering bell didn’t emerge until the 19th century, introduced by French and American clockmakers. The first snooze button didn’t arrive until 1956. 

Monks were some of the first people who cared deeply about accurately tracking the passage of time. For centuries, they relied on water-driven clocks that would ring a bell to mark their daily rituals—for example, when they needed to pause at the eighth hour of daylight for prayer. When the first mechanical clocks arrived in the late 13th-century—they, too, were used in ecclesiastical contexts, to keep prayer, work and meal schedules and, increasingly, in the bell towers of churches. In fact, the word “clock” comes from the Latin clocca, which means “bell.”  

Mechanical clocks were exclusively for the rich through at least the 17th century. Only churches, royal palaces and the very wealthiest households could afford these intricate, hand-made machines. In addition to telling time, many clocks and even watches in 16th-century Europe had programmable alarms. Queen Elizabeth I reportedly owned a tiny ring-based watch that sounded a “silent alarm,” reminding her of her appointments by gently scratching her finger with a metal prong.  

Levi Hutchins, an American clockmaker, built one of the first (relatively) affordable alarm clocks in 1787. Hutchins, who lived in Concord, New Hampshire, engineered his wooden, cabinet-style clock to ring a bell every morning at precisely 4 a.m., his preferred wake-up time. Hutchins didn’t patent his invention, which is just as well, because not everyone wants to get up before dawn.  

Fifty years after Hutchins, a French clockmaker named Antoine Redier is credited with filing the first patent for an alarm clock in 1847, closely followed in 1852 by a U.S. patent for a “Time-Alarm Clock” by J.S. Turner. 

It wasn’t long before clockmakers were selling “illumination alarm clocks” that struck a match and lit an oil lamp at the sound of the bell. Think of them as the world’s first “sunrise” alarm clocks.  

In 1876, the Seth Thomas Clock Company patented the standard bedside alarm clock, which became mass produced at the turn of the 20th century. The first alarm clock with a snooze button came from General Electric-Telechron, which designed the futuristic 1956 “Snooz-Alarm.” Because of the size and shape of the clock’s alarm gear, the snooze function only worked for nine minutes, not 10. All these years later, that’s still the standard snooze time, even for smartphones.