The earliest mechanical clocks, traced to (roughly) 14th-century Europe, were nothing but alarms — faceless, hands-less objects that sounded a bell at a designated hour. Today you can get alarm clocks that yield almost any noise: your favorite morning DJ, a pre-programmed tune, a knocking sound. One company’s “moonbeam alarm” wakes you with a flashing light. The Zen alarm sounds a single, steady chime. Another clock emits a rooster’s call. (If not for the needy hen, might not the alarm clock have long ago rendered the barnyard cock obsolete?)

Yet nothing remains more popular than the classic brr-ii-ii-ing, that tinny, optimistic jingle that forces you to rise but also urges you to shine. The trilling timepiece lends order to our lives — Ambrose Bierce defined oblivion as “a dormitory without an alarm clock”— and as such it is perhaps not so cruel after all, at least not to the happy life. The morning ring tells us that we are receiving the most precious of all gifts to savor and to seize: another day.