The first American alarm clock could ring only at 4 a.m.

Antique clock, circa 1900

In 1787, clockmaker Levi Hutchins of Concord, New Hampshire, invented what may have been the world’s first working mechanical alarm clock, and was certainly the first in the United States. But despite Hutchins’ long career building and selling timepieces, this alarm clock wasn’t something he actually patented or sold. He just wanted to wake up at 4 a.m., and felt out of sorts if he slept any later. So he took the assembly from one of his clocks and added a small gear that would trigger a bell at that precise time.

According to The People’s Almanac, Hutchins said just having the idea for an alarm clock was the hard part, and “it was simplicity itself to arrange for the bell to sound at the predetermined hour.” Because the alarm was built directly into the mechanism of the clock, it wasn’t adjustable or snoozable — useful only for someone who wanted to wake at that exact wee hour of the morning every day. Notably, Hutchins did not live alone at the time — he shared a home with his brother Abel, and married just a couple of years later — so hopefully he kept the volume at a reasonable level, at least.

By the Numbers

Did you know?

The nine-minute snooze dates back to the first snooze button.

In 1956, General Electric-Telechron debuted the alarm clock feature that most of us still use today, whether we’re waking to a clock radio or relying on our phones: the snooze button. While in some cases you can adjust the interval, the standard snooze on alarm clocks and iPhones alike is nine minutes, which seems arbitrary but actually isn’t: The first snooze button was part of an analog clock, and the gear teeth wouldn’t line up to allow a 10-minute snooze. This technical limitation is long gone, but those early alarm clocks created the standard still used today.