[galphanet]

I heard that the acadians people where praying in front of the over. If they can stay there until the end of the pray, the oven is ready to bake the bread. Otherwise, they had to wait a few more minutes. I think it was this way because they didn't learn how to count.

[stan_rogers]

It wouldn't be about "not learning how to count", but about keeping a rhythm that makes the time predictable within a relatively small variation. I used similar tricks for long exposure photography back in the long ago. (There was a period in the late '70s and early '80s when radium illuminated dials had gone away, their replacements didn't stay illuminated long enough, GraLab-type timers were too bulky by far, and neither LEDs/micro fluorescent segment displays nor LCD side-lighting on watches were up to the task. I had, between cadets and the regular force, more than a decade of military experience then. British Grenadiers - a marching tune - takes 16 seconds to play/whistle/hum through once, breaks down easily into 4-second chunks, and only "feels" right if the speed is right for a 120 paces-per-minute march. Heart Of Oak takes 32 seconds, etc. That allowed me to be remarkably consistent across exposures without a usable external timing device. Habitual prayers, especially when combined with something like a rosary to keep the count accurate, would have the same sort of consistency.)