How many times have you found yourself breaking your personal record for pressing the snooze button before you get out of bed? A common problem for most I’m sure and we know all too well how groggy we feel when we drift in and out of sleep for that extra half an hour in the mornings. How many times have you promised yourself you’ll get straight out of bed when your alarm has gone off?
Just think about what you could do with that extra time in the morning. Watch the sunrise, walk the dog, go for a run, read the paper or spend quality time with the family before you all head off to school or work. A number of studies have shown that the snooze button does more harm than good and can often leave you feeling drowsy or less rested than you should after a nights sleep.
Long ago in the times before alarm clocks and the daily grind in the office people woke naturally with the sunrise and the cock-a-doodle-doo of farmyard birds and got on with a long day of hard labour and seemed to manage it, tirelessly, everyday.
The first alarm clock was invented in 1787 but was only set to wake inventor Levi Hutchins at 4am! It was then the mind of Lew Wallace who ruined everything with the snooze button. The humble alarm clock has seen huge changes over the years and now a group of young inventors from California are developing ‘The chipper’. This is a strip which sits underneath your mattress and is linked to your smartphone. When your alarm goes off to wake you up it will not stop until you physically get out of bed. Not only that, it is extremely intelligent and knows if you have snook back between the sheets and will continually go off again.
The only way to fool this device is to lift the mattress and remove the strip but by the time you have wrestled with the duvet and taken it out you may as well just get up!
Although not yet available the developers are working on having this in the shops over the next year so look out for it and look forward to feeling awake, refreshed and well rested until bed time.
