Time in Middle-earth

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

and Bilbo describes the interior of Erebor as a "clockless, timeless hole", which is the nearest we have to evidence that Dwarves did not have clocks. Of course other possibilities exist, such as that any clocks in Erebor had naturally become nonfunctional over many years.

-and-

suggest to me that Professor Tolkien imagined clocks to be an invention peculiar to the Shire and Hobbits, and perhaps only known outside it in neighbouring Bree-land, which was of course another place in which Hobbits lived in numbers.

I think Bilbo was describing Erebor as it was at that current time, which was essentially a ruin.

My thought is that clocks might be construed as a dwarven invention to help them tell time in their underground homes where they did not have the benefit of the sun to mark the passage of time.