Hourglass in '3-legged' wooden stand. This hourglass has a running time of one hour.

Hourglass in '4-legged' wooden stand

Three minute egg timer

An hourglass, also known as a sandglass or sand timer or sand clock, is a device for the measurement of time. It consists of two glass bulbs placed one above the other which are connected by a narrow tube. One of the bulbs is usually filled with fine sand which flows through the narrow tube into the bottom bulb at a given rate. Once all the sand has run to the bottom bulb, the device is inverted in order to measure another time period. Look up hourglass in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Size of this preview: 280 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (984 × 2107 pixel, file size: 729 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Size of this preview: 280 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (984 × 2107 pixel, file size: 729 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Download high resolution version (1944x2592, 1953 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Download high resolution version (1944x2592, 1953 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Size of this preview: 304 × 599 pixelsFull resolution (780 × 1536 pixel, file size: 213 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) Picture of an hourglass egg timer. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Size of this preview: 304 × 599 pixelsFull resolution (780 × 1536 pixel, file size: 213 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) Picture of an hourglass egg timer. ... Look up time in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... This article is about the material. ... For other uses, see Sand (disambiguation). ...

Factors affecting the amount of time that the hourglass measures include: the volume of sand, the size and angle of the bulbs, the width of the neck, and the type and quality of the sand. Alternatives to sand that have been used are powdered eggshell and powdered marble. It is still in use, but typically only ornamentally or when a relatively approximate measurement of time is needed (for example in cooking or board games). For cooking and games the time period will be only a few minutes (for cooking eggs, a three minute timer is typical, hence the nickname eggtimer for three minute hourglasses). Today, hourglass collecting has become a niche but avid hobby for some, with elaborate or antique hourglasses commanding huge prices. For other uses, see Volume (disambiguation). ... This article is about angles in geometry. ... For other uses, see Marble (disambiguation). ... Cooking is the act of preparing food. ... A board game is a game played with counters or pieces that are placed on, removed from, or moved across a board (a premarked surface, usually specific to that game). ...

Whilst they are no longer widely use for keeping time, some institutions do maintain them, the Australian parliament uses an hourglass to time certain procedures such as divisions. ^{[citation needed]} Parliament House, Canberra The Parliament of Australia is a bicameral parliament consisting of the Queen of Australia, the House of Representatives (the lower house) and the Senate (the upper house or house of review). Section 1 of the Constitution of Australia provides that: The legislative power of the Commonwealth shall...

[edit] History

The hourglass was created by the Venetians. Since the hourglass was one of the few reliable methods of measuring time at sea, it has been speculated that it was in use as far back as the 11th century, where it would have complemented the magnetic compass as an aid to navigation.

However, it is not until the 14th century that evidence of their existence was found, appearing in the painting Allegory of Good Government by Ambrogio Lorenzetti 1338.^[1][2] Ambrogio Lorenzetti (or Ambruogio Laurati) (c. ...

From the 15th century onwards they were being used in a wide range of applications at sea, in the church, in industry and in cookery. They were the first dependable, reusable and reasonably accurate measure of time. The rate of flow of the sand is independent of the depth in the upper reservoir, and the instrument is not liable to freeze. The hourglass was often depicted on pirate flags where it symbolised the fact that human existence is fleeting, and in England hourglasses were sometimes placed in coffins to symbolise the fact that the "sands of time" had run out.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Example use

During the voyage of Ferdinand Magellan around the globe, his vessels kept 18 hourglasses per ship. It was the job of a ship's page to turn the hourglasses and thus provide the times for the ship's log. Noon was the reference time for navigation, which did not depend on the glass, as the sun would be at its zenith. ^{[citation needed]} For the Presidential railcar named Ferdinand Magellan, see Ferdinand Magellan Railcar. ... In broad terms, the zenith is the direction pointing directly above a particular location (perpendicular, orthogonal). ...

The sandglass is still widely used as the kitchen eggtimer, for which supposed purpose it is sold widely as souvenirs. Many board games also make use of it. Egg timer of the traditional hourglass type. ... A board game is any game played with a premarked surface, with counters or pieces that are moved across the board. ...

[edit] Related terms

(Slang) A woman with a narrow waist and full hips and bust is said to have an hourglass figure.

Hourglass Model - a project research approach (Trochim, W.M.K, 2005). The hourglass model starts with a broad spectrum for research, focusing in on the required information through the methodology of the project (like the neck of the hourglass), then expands the research in the form of discussion and results.

[edit] Appearances in modern works

This section does not cite any references or sources. Please improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (July 2007)

• In MGM's The Wizard of Oz, the wicked witch of the west had a large hourglass, with pillars in the form of winged griffins. Filled with red sand, the piece was used to add suspense, by counting the time to Dorothy's supposed demise. Later, when the witch threw the hourglass off a balcony in a fit of anger, it exploded on the castle floor.

• In computer operating systems, an icon of an hourglass has often been used as a mouse pointer when the computer has exceeded its RAM or other system resources. It informs the user that the computer is processing tasks, and cannot accept more tasks until those complete.

• In the Roman segment of Mel Brooks' History of the World Part 1, one of the characters has a small hourglass attached to his wrist. At one point, he consults it like a modern wristwatch, and remarks "He should have been here over thirty grains ago!"

• In Walt Disney's Aladdin, the evil wizard Jafar traps Princess Jasmine inside an enormous hourglass.

• A relatively large hourglass is used by the character Imhotep (played by Arnold Vosloo) in The Mummy Returns while threatening the boy named Alex O'Connell.

• Four giant hourglasses filled with various gems are found in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and they are used to record the house points of Hogwarts' four houses.

• In the Harry Potter series, the Time-Turner is a small gold hourglass worn on a gold chain around the neck. It's a very powerful and dangerous magical item which literally turns back time for the user, one hour per inversion of the glass. Hermione uses it to travel in time to attend all her classes. She and Harry also use it to save Sirius and Buckbeak in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

• In Ubisoft's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and its sequel Warrior Within the Hourglass is an object that is central to the plot.

• In the Philippines, a Golden Hourglass was used for a tele-fantasya, Etheria, continuation of the Encantadia trilogy.

• In Days of Our Lives, the hourglass is the symbolic icon shown in the beginning and end credits.

• In the Area 88 remake, a rebel sniper uses the hourglass as a symbolism when someone's life (The mercenary pilot/base personnel) was already over before shooting him.

• An hourglass plays a pivotal role in the video game for the Nintendo DS system: The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.

• In the 2001 Liquid Entertainment strategy game Battle Realms, Issyl, a Lotus hero, uses an oversized hourglass as weapon with ability Haste, which fasten nearby allies.

• In the video game Kula World, an hourglass is used as the timer to show players how much time is left on their current levels.

• In the Discworld series, Death's Domain has the Room of Lifetimers, a room filled with the hourglass (lifetimer) of every living being in the world. The room even has a hidden, much smaller room (the size of a cathedral) adjoining it, which contains the lifetimers of the gods.

• Some video games, when levels are timed, have power-up in the shape of hourglasses. Typically, these add one minute to the clock immediately. An example of this is the original Jazz Jackrabbit game.

• The Catacomb 3D series of computer games features an hourglass-based power-up that freezes all of the action (except for the hero, Petton) until a counter reaches zero (i.e., "100 grains of the Sands of Time," where each grain represents an unstated interval of time.)

• The bands Liquid Tension Experiment and Lamb of God both have songs called Hourglass

• Heroes of Might and Magic III features an hourglass as an in-game artifact, that negates all luck effects in combat.

• In an episode of Batman, the Clock King traps Batman and Robin in a giant hourglass, whereupon they escape by tipping it and running on it in the manner of a hamster wheel.

• Northern Lights by Phillip Pullman = a symbol on the Alethiometer meaning a year etc.

• In The Elder Scrolls, an hourglass is seen being carried by Akatosh, the dragon-god of time.

• In Pan's Labyrinth the young girl, Ofelia, must race to against the time of an hourglass to retrieve a dagger from a child-eating monster.

• In an episode of the Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy (Halls of Time) everyone in the world had an hourglass (kept by Father Time) that measured their life span. Once the hourglass runs out, the person's life is over. This is also referred to in the web comic Grim Tales from Down Below which is based on the Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy.

• In The Amazing Race, at every Yield point, whenever a team is yielded, they must turn over the hourglass and wait for all the sand to fall to the ground.

• In GSN's show Inquizition, the Inquizitor would turn over an hourglass just prior to the start of the first round. Second season contestants also wore bowling shirts with an hourglass on the back, which would be revealed as they turned around to leave the studio, should they be eliminated.

• In anime series The Big O the main character, Roger Smith, collects hourglasses and displays them on his desk. Sometimes he is seen weighing sand for the hourglasses.

• In the Dragonlance series of books, the character Raistlin Majere has enchanted eyes that are gold in color with hourglass pupils. His eyes allow him to see time as it effects all things. these are a major part of his character

Image File history File links Question_book-3. ... MGM logo Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer or MGM, is a large media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of cinema and television programs. ... The Wizard of Oz (film) redirects here. ... Mel Brooks (born June 28, 1926) is an Academy Award-winning American director, writer, comedian, actor and producer best known as a creator of broad film farces and comedy parodies. ... The DVD cover artwork for the movie depicts many of the eras parodied in the film History of the World, Part I is a 1981 film directed by Mel Brooks. ... For the company founded by Disney, see The Walt Disney Company. ... This article is about the Disney film. ... Arnold Vosloo (born 16 June 1962) is a South African/American actor, known for playing the title role in the 1999 film The Mummy and its sequel, The Mummy Returns. ... The Mummy Returns is a 2001 American movie starring Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, and Arnold Vosloo, and is directed by Stephen Sommers. ... Joanne Rowling OBE (born July 31, 1965 in Chipping Sodbury, South Gloucestershire), commonly known as J.K. Rowling (pronunciation: roll-ing; her former students used to joke with her name calling her the Rolling Stone), is a British fiction writer. ... This article is about the Harry Potter series of novels. ... Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is a fictional setting in J. K. Rowlings best-selling Harry Potter series. ... This article is about the Harry Potter series of novels. ... “HP3” redirects here. ... Ubisoft Entertainment (formerly Ubi Soft) is a computer and video game publisher and developer with headquarters in Montreuil-sous-Bois, France. ... Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is a third-person action adventure video game published by Ubisoft. ... Prince of Persia: Warrior Within Categories: Computer and video game stubs | 2004 computer and video games | Game Boy Advance games | GameCube games | PlayStation 2 games | Windows games | Xbox games | Ubisoft Entertainment games | Action-adventure games ... Etheria is a Filipino fantasy television series that was produced by GMA Network. ... Days of our Lives is an American soap opera, which has aired nearly every weekday since November 8, 1965[2] on the NBC network in the United States, and has since been syndicated to many countries around the world. ... Serialized in Big Comic Spirits Original run 1979 – 1986 No. ... Computer and video games redirects here. ... NDS redirects here. ... Year 2001 (MMI) was a common year starting on Monday (link displays the 2001 Gregorian calendar). ... Liquid Entertainment logo Liquid Entertainment is a computer game development company co-founded in March, 1999 by Ed Del Castillo and Michael Grayford. ... Chess is one of the most well-known and played strategy games of all time. ... Battle Realms, released by Ubisoft in 2001, is a martial arts themed real-time strategy computer game and is the first game created by relatively new Liquid Entertainment. ... Computer and video games redirects here. ... Kula World (also known as Roll-Away or Kula Quest) is a 3D (platform based) puzzle game created for the Sony PlayStation, which places the player in control of a Kula beach ball. ... This article is about the novels. ... Power Up, the Professional Organization of Women in Entertainment Reaching Up is an organization with the stated mission to promote the visibility and integration of gay women in entertainment, the arts, and all forms of media. Power Up provided funding and assistance to the 2003 short film . ... Jazz Jackrabbit Jazz Jackrabbit is the title character of a series of platform games. ... Catacomb 3D, is a series of computer games from id Software, published by Softdisk publishing that was released in November 1991. ... This article needs a complete rewrite for the reasons listed on the talk page. ... Liquid Tension Experiment is an instrumental progressive rock / metal project initiated by Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy. ... Lamb of God is a Grammy-nominated five-piece metal band from Richmond, Virginia, formerly known as Burn the Priest. ... Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Restoration of Erathia (sometimes referred to as Heroes III, Heroes 3 or HoMM3) is a turn-based strategy game developed by New World Computing for Microsoft Windows and released by the 3DO Company in 1999. ... This article is about the 1960s television series. ... Photo of a hamster wheel The related term squirrel cage may refer to: a squirrel cage rotor a squirrel cage fan or blower Hamster wheels are toys introduced into the habitats of usually rodent pets. ... Bethesda Softworks Elder Scrolls 10th anniversary logo from 2004. ... Akatosh is the chief member of the Nine Divines, a group of Gods within The Elder Scrolls polytheistic religion. ... Pans Labyrinth (Spanish: El Laberinto del Fauno; literally The Labyrinth of the Faun) is an Academy Award-winning Spanish language fantasy film[2][3] written and directed by Mexican film-maker Guillermo del Toro. ... The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, created by Maxwell Atoms, is an American animated television series that currently airs on Cartoon Network and Teletoon. ... Terror of the Black Night / Battle of the Bands / Halls of Time is the 21st episode of The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy. ... This article is about the personification of time. ... Grim Tales from Down Below is a manga-styled webcomic based on the animated television series The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy. ... The Game Show Network (GSN) is an American cable television and direct broadcast satellite channel dedicated to game shows and interactive television games. ... Inquizition was a game show created by Game Show Network and Sande Stewart Television. ... Original run October 13, 1999 – January 19, 2000 No. ... The current edition Dragonlance logo, as seen on all books published in the more recent times. ... Raistlin Majere (326 - 356 AC) is a fictional character from the Dragonlance series of books. ...

[edit] References

1. ^ Frugoni, Chiara (1988). Pietro et Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Scala Books, 83. ISBN 0935748806. 
2. ^ http://www.huntfor.com/absoluteig/lorenzetti_a.htm

• Mills, A.A.; Day, S. & Parkes, S. (1996), "Mechanics of the sandglass", European Journal of Physics 17: 97-109, DOI:10.1088/0143-0807/17/3/001, <http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0143-0807/17/3/001/ej6301.pdf>

• , <http://www.madehow.com/Volume-5/Hourglass.html>

• , <http://www.aiwaz.net/panopticon/allegory-of-good-government/gi336c57>

A digital object identifier (or DOI) is a standard for persistently identifying a piece of intellectual property on a digital network and associating it with related data, the metadata, in a structured extensible way. ...

[edit] Further readings

Books

• Branley, Franklyn M. (1993), Keeping time: From the beginning and into the twenty-first century, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company

• Cowan, Harrison J. (1958), Time and its measurement: From the stone age to the nuclear age, New York: The World Publishing Company

• Guye, Samuel & Henri, Michel (1970), Time and space: Measuring instruments from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, New York: Praeger Publishers

• Smith, Alan (1975), Clocks and watches: American, European and Japanese timepieces, New York: Crescent Books

Periodicals

• Morris, Scot (September 1992), "The floating hourglass", Omni: 86

• Peterson, Ivars (September 11, 1993), "Trickling sand: how an hourglass ticks", Science News

Web

• A short history of hourglasses at Tom Young's site, <http://tkyoung.com/history.html> He has been making hourglasses for decades.

[edit] See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Hourglasses

• Water clock
• Timewheel
• Egg timer