How people used to wake up on time before alarm clocks leaves everybody making the same joke

The morning commute is a thing of the past for many.

As they sit in their homes away from the smell of other people's body odour on public transport or honking in traffic four hours a day, there's a sense of smugness that some get a little more time in bed.

But, what did we do in a time before alarm clocks? After all, even if we get to catch some extra shut-eye in the morning, we still have to get up for work.

The first alarm clock was actually invented all the way back in 1787 by Levi Hutchins, but as it could only be set for 4am, it wasn't exactly useful unless you're a milkman.

Even though adjustable alarm clocks were patented as early as 1847 by French inventor Antoine Redier, they wouldn't become a common household item until much later.

After all, how many people could afford a fancy gadget like an alarm clock in the 19th Century?

What did we do in a time before alarm clocks? (milorad kravic / Getty)

There were many ingenious ways to get woken up before the alarm clock, and back in the day, 'knocker-uppers' were employed to rouse you from your slumber.

Before you ask, knocker uppers have nothing to do with the movie Knocked Up, so get your mind out of the sewers.

Armed with a bamboo stick or sometimes a pea-shooter, the knocker-uppers would rap on your window and get paid a few pence a week.

While some would wait until they saw the client was awake, others would tap a few times and then move on.

In Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, there's a brief mention of a knocker-upper, while the TV documentary The Worst Jobs in History included a knocker-upper on its list of undesirable career paths.

In Ireland, miners would write their hours on boards known as 'knocky-up boards' or 'wake-up slates' so the knocker-upper knew when to wake them up.

Popular in the Netherlands, Britain, and Ireland, the knocker-uppers are sadly no more.

Although the job of a knocker-upper was largely defunct the 1950s, small pockets of industrial England apparently had them until the early 1970s.

In a YouTube short explaining what a knocker-upper does, it seems everyone is saying the same thing.

Notably, people can't believe someone was employed to effectively be a personal rooster. Someone joked: "'What do you do for a living?' 'I’m an alarm clock.'"

Another added, "'So, What's your Job?''I knock people up,'" and a third said, "'Why didn't u arrive to work?' 'My alarm clock died.'"

While it's all well and good to laugh at the idea of a knocker-upper, they served an important role before that default iPhone alarm of 'Radar' was giving us PTSD every morning.

Still, the knocker-upper is just another job made obsolete by technology.