History of the Hour: Clocks and Modern Temporal Orders

Front Cover
University of Chicago Press, 1996 - 455 pages
In this sweeping study of the organization of time, Dohrn-van Rossum offers fresh insight into the history of the mechanical clock and its influence on European society from the late Middle Ages to the industrial revolution. Detailing the clock's effects on social activity, he presents a vivid picture of a society regulated by the precise measurement of identical hours.

"In tracing the evolution of time consciousness with scholarship and skill . . . Dohrn-van Rossum evokes the many ways that the small moments of life have come to be reckoned with the passage of time."—Dava Sobel, Civilization

"Dohrn-van Rossum paints a highly nuanced picture of time's conquest of modern life."—Steven Lagerfeld, Wilson Quarterly

"This book is definitive in showing the clock's pervasive influence over European society."—Virginia Quarterly Review

"[A] delightful, excellently translated history."—Choice

"Dohrn-van Rossum has produced a persuasive and brilliantly documented new understanding of how modern time-consciousness arose."—Owen Gingerich, Nature
 

Contents

The Division of the Day and TimeKeeping in Antiquity
17
The Medieval Hours Hora
29
Medieval Horologia and the Development of
45
The Diffusion
125
Late Medieval Clockmakers
173
Clock Time Signal Communal Bell and Municipal
197
The Introduction of Modern
217
Work Time and Hourly Wage
289
TimeKeeping
323
Abbreviations
351
Bibliography
435
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Bibliographic information