Digital Alarm Clock History: The Worst Part Of Waking Up
As our alarms went from analog to digital, the noises they made became a lot more abrasive. Here’s the story of the technology behind your alarm clock.
Here’s a strange question for you: Can you become nostalgic for abrasive noises? Particularly those noises that are specifically designed to force you out of bed into the arms of morning glory?
I ask this because I was posed a question on this topic recently by a pal of mine, Sarah Davis, a.k.a. Laughterkey, one of the best Tumblr users of all time.
She was watching a cooking video recently when she heard an alarm that took her way back to her childhood — a staccato four-beep sound which you can find isolated here. (I personally grew up with this sound, which I describe as a blare.)
So why are these sounds so familiar — and so consistent? Let’s discuss the digital alarm clock.
1831
The year that the Joseph Henry, the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, invented what’s widely considered the first electric doorbell, which used a tightly coiled electromagnet to create a ringing noise by forcing a magnet to swing at a bell using the electric current. A mechanical…
