Remembering the ‘Knocker-Ups’ Hired to Wake Workers with Pea Shooters | Hacker News Reader

Remembering the ‘Knocker-Ups’ Hired to Wake Workers with Pea Shooters

atlasobscura.com

The Royal Navy still does this - partially because you want to ensure that whoever is going to relieve you at 0400 is definitely awake and getting ready.

I always slept more soundly when I was getting a "shake" versus relying on my alarm clock. It's very comforting to know that you're absolutely going to be woken up when you asked to be and not have to worry about your phone being on charge or accidentally sleeping through an alarm. It also meant you didn't have to do time zone maths when you went to bed and that your alarm wouldn't wake your cabin mates.

In my fraternity we all slept in a single room (a cold-air dormitory). That way you could stay up studying or whatever without bothering anyone trying to sleep. As such no alarms were allowed from 6 to 9 am and there were two people who had to sleep in their rooms for wake up duty. We had a big board outside the sleeping hall and there were 2 tags for every bunk number. And there was a nail for every half hour from 6 to 9. If you wanted to be woken up but not forced up you could put your bunk number's black tag on a certain time (perhaps 6:30) and a red tag on a different time (7:00). The guy on wakeup duty would come shake you every 5 minutes, 15 minutes prior to the tag time. At 5 minutes past, he was allowed to do anything (punching, ice water) until you got out of your bunk and put your red tag bag on its own nail.

All this to say - yes. Fantastic fucking sleep. The cranked AC in the summer the open windows even in the depths of winter helped too. Deepest sleep I've ever gotten.

That seems overly complicated

In days of yore (and as immortalized in O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series) the bosun and his mates would come through and wake the sleeping watch. "Out or down! Here I come, with a sharp knife and a clear conscience!"

The meaning was that if you didn't get out of your hammock it would be cut down with you in it. An abrupt and rude awakening and potentially leaving you with a chore to fix your hammock before you could sleep again.

I've heard of the practice of knockerups several times before but always they used a rod of some sort. The title is misleading as it reports plurally but the story states that Mary Smith was unusual in singularly using a pea-shooter and only reports on her, and later - on her demise - her daughter Mary, using a pea-shooter [possibly the self-same one?].

Yes! I always thought the unaided or alarm clock only wake up is a tall order and doesn't quite jive with how I sleep/wake. A proper physical wake up is just the thing.

God dammit. I love this idea.

Being woken up by a person sounds so much more pleasant than the idea of some obnoxious scheduled noise. Alarm clocks and telephone calls are the most dehumanizing thing ever. Even if you can ignore it because the alarm isn't for you, but the person next to you. Sometimes having to wake up to someone else's terrible morning alarm is worse, because you can't exactly opt out on the same terms.

At least you can whine and complain to a person trying to wake you up, however antagonizing and snarky they may be.

Google Knocker-up: a new Assistant feature that wakes you up with a gentle voice and interacts with you as you get out of your sleepy state. Might be worth a rebranding, though.

I'm sure I remember a mobile app that would connect you with a random user at the appointed time, chat-roulette style (although I think this was voice only, no video).

A bit of Googling has found several chat apps (e.g. Holla, Wakie) but none that specifically mention an alarm feature, but I'm sure I remember it.

It has obvious potential for trolling and abuse, but maybe a premium version, where you pay a small fee for the best 'knocker-ups' could be popular!

I remember this too so I looked it up. It was Wakie, but it seems that they’ve de-emphasized the wake-up call aspect.

Here’s an article from 2014: https://techcrunch.com/2014/12/10/wakie/

Interesting, thanks! I assumed Wakie was the one (from the name) but was confused when I couldn't find any mention of the wake-up feature.

I guess it's one of those ideas that seems fun but has way too much potential for creepiness!

If you're trying to minimize the pain of waking up, a better bet is probably the watch alarms that identify gaps in REM sleep.

I've switched from scheduled noise to scheduled light and it works very well. I'm in the process of building a bigger version with DMX controlled stage lights so I can actually feel the warmth of the simulated sun :-)

Edit: Obviously if the light wasn't effective there will be an acoustic signal at some point. Wouldn't want to get sunburn.

I used an app a couple of years ago where you would get a phonecall from a stranger. And in return you could call random people that were due to be woken up. The problem from was is that a stranger had pretty much as much authority like me snooze button.

Who was waking up the knocker ups?

Some people are naturally early birds. Either by long ingraned habits. I used to get up fairly early without an alarm until we had kids. Now I can't sleep in enough (nor am I allowed to ;).

quis expergiscitur ipsos expergiscitodes?

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