It's a funny old game, inventing. How can we have had the idea for the sewing needle 60,000 years ago, yet not come up with the wheel — surely a much more basic concept — until some 5,500 years ago?
James M. Russell's ramble through the cunning contraptions produced by our ancestors contains some real surprises.
Take the alarm clock mentioned in the title. Plato and his students needed to be up in time for lessons, so the Greek genius built a vessel that gradually filled with water, forcing air through tiny openings that acted as whistles. This, in itself, is clever enough.
