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Before Alarm Clocks, Nobody Needed One — Then the Industrial Revolution Changed Everything

For most of human history, nobody needed an alarm clock.

Work followed the sun. Time was fluid. You woke up when it got light, and slept when it got dark.

Then the Industrial Revolution showed up — and everything changed.

In this episode of Hidden History with Aiden Thomas, we follow waking up itself from medieval monastery bells through the brutal new schedules of the factory floor — where a profession called the "knocker-upper" tapped on bedroom windows for a fee.

In 1847, a man named Levi Hutchins built the first adjustable mechanical alarm clock, and it could only ring at 4:00 AM, because…

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