Alexa — Wake Me Up

We’ve always had an alarm clock beside our bed to wake us up. But for the past year or so, I’ve used Alexa instead of a clock. But I still say, “Alexa, set the alarm for 6:00 o’clock (or whatever time I want to wake up.)

But that got me to wondering how did people wake up at a specific time before clocks, clock-radios, Alexa and other sound-making devices came along.
Well, it turns out that one solution was to have someone else do it — long ago in England, you could hire a guy to come by each morning and, using a long pole, knock on your bedroom window to wake you up so you could get to work on time. This practice supposedly began during the Industrial Revolution, when getting to work on time was a new and innovative idea.
I am not making this up — the British terminology for the pole operator was a “knocker-up.” I’m not sure how the pole operator managed to get himself up on time. 

I’ve read that you don’t need any type of alarm — your body’s circadian rhythms give you a sort of natural wake-up call via your body temperature’s daily fluctuation. It rises every morning regardless of when you went to bed. Some studies indicate that this rising temperature wakes us up if the alarm hasn’t already gone off. 
One study, conducted at the University of Lubeck in Germany, found that people have an innate ability to wake themselves up very early if they anticipate it beforehand. One night, the researchers told 15 subjects that they would be awakened at 6:00 a.m. Around 4:30 a.m., the researchers noticed that the subjects began to experience a rise in the stress hormone adrenocorticotropin. On another night, the subjects were told that they would get a 9:00 a.m. wake-up call — but the researchers shook them out of bed early, at 6:00 a.m. and this time the adrenocorticotropin levels of the subjects held steady in the early morning hours.

So apparently, you can just use your body to wake up — good to know in case your were thinking about hiring a knocker-up.
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