Hourglass

The Hourglass is likely the most common Timekeeping device seen throughout Siliren today. The device itself is usually cheap, but much more useful and accurate than the, even cheaper, Sundial. Hourglasses range widely in their materials, prices, size, and accuracy. 

The Hourglass can be used more widely than a Sundial, as it can tell the time despite the weather being sunny or cloudy, and can continue to tell the time during the night. While Hourglasses are less portable than Sundials, they can be used within structures that block sunlight such as homes and businesses. 

The cheapest Hourglass is usually made from glass with sand inside and has to be manually turned. These manual Hourglasses usually do not measure the time of day, but are more akin to timers, letting the users know when an hour or so has passed. 

Hourglasses tend to be very accurate down to the minute. Most have labels on the glass that tell what time it is, or how much time has passed based on the level of sand or other measuring material contained within. 

The most accurate and expensive Hourglasses are water clocks that tend to have varying shapes. These types use water to determine the passage of time and can be accurate down to the tens of seconds. These water clocks are mainly used to tell the time of day, rather than the passage of a certain amount of time, and therefore tend to rotate on their own, rather than manually. 

While autorotation Hourglasses do not have to be water clocks, they tend to be because of the accuracy of water compared to sand. Automation is successfully done by mounting the Hourglass on a sort of pendulum that flips when enough weight has reached the bottom, restarting the clock. Usually these restart every 12 hours. 

Autorotation Hourglasses are more popular on ships and caravans or other moving structures as they can stay relatively accurate despite the moving floor. While most ships tend to follow the sky in terms of time, some Captains enjoy having a more accurate Timekeeping device, in which case a sand autorotation hourglass is most common.