Mid-Week Mini: The Alarm Clock That Ruined Mornings Forever

In this week’s Mid-Week Mini Episode, we talk about the first alarm clock, why it only rang at an unmentionable hour and why the snooze button standard became 9 minutes.

Here’s something that feels deeply personal to anyone who has ever slapped a phone screen half-awake and whispered, “Five more minutes.” The first known alarm clock in history didn’t give you any options. It didn’t care about your schedule, your mood, or whether you went to bed too late. It rang at exactly 4:00 a.m. and that was the deal.

In 1787, American inventor Levi Hutchins built what’s widely considered the first alarm clock in Concord, New Hampshire. Mechanically, it was a modified clock designed to strike a bell, but only at one preset time. This wasn’t an oversight or a limitation of early technology. Hutchins designed it this way on purpose.

He didn’t want to wake up early sometimes. He wanted to wake up early every single day, without fail. And not “early” in the modern sense of 6 or 7 a.m. No – Hutchins set his alarm for 4:00 a.m., well before sunrise, because he believed those hours were best suited for prayer, reflection, and productive work. In his mind, the quiet before dawn was sacred time, and sleeping through it was a moral failure.

And here’s the part that really seals it – the clock could not be adjusted. There was no knob, lever, or workaround to change the alarm time. If you owned one, you weren’t buying a convenience. You were buying into a belief system. Owning that clock meant committing to a lifestyle where 4 a.m. was non-negotiable. Imagine explaining that to houseguests who just wanted to sleep in on a Sunday.

For a long time, that’s how alarm clocks existed – custom-built, rare, and usually tied to very specific needs. It wasn’t until 1847 that alarm clocks became something regular people could actually buy. That’s when Antoine Redier patented the first commercially available adjustable alarm clock in France. For the first time, people could choose when they wanted to be miserable.

As industrialization ramped up in the late 1800s and factory schedules became more rigid, alarm clocks went from novelty to necessity. By the early 20th century, they were standard household items, not because people loved waking up early, but because society had decided punctuality mattered more than rest.

I personally set my alarm clock to wake me up at 7am every day. On travel days when I have those super early 3 and 4 am wake ups, I set 3 alarms with 3 different alarm tones and I set them at 3 minute increments. Why 3 minutes? Because in my logic, that gives me time to get up but not enough time to get into the shower, so if I get up and forget to turn off my second and third alarms, I won’t be in the shower when they go off, which is the worst thing ever.

And this brings us to the snooze button – humanity’s quiet rebellion.

When snooze functions were first added to mechanical alarm clocks in the mid-20th century, manufacturers had a very specific problem. They needed a delay long enough to feel meaningful, but short enough that you wouldn’t fall back into deep sleep. Many clocks also used gears based on ten-minute intervals, but a full ten-minute snooze risked overlapping the next alarm cycle. So companies like Westclox landed on a compromise: nine minutes.

Not ten. Not five. Nine.

That oddly specific snooze time stuck, and even as clocks went digital, manufacturers kept it out of tradition and habit. Today, your phone could easily offer a perfectly round ten-minute snooze, but instead it lovingly preserves a mechanical limitation from decades ago. You’re not choosing nine minutes of extra sleep. History chose it for you.

So the next time your alarm goes off, your snooze button lies to you, and you negotiate with yourself like it’s a hostage situation, remember this.

It could be worse.
You could be living in 1787.
And it could be 4:00 a.m.
Because the internet says it’s true.