About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks
David Rooney
New York; W W Norton and Company Inc, 2021.
The book under review by an internationally acclaimed Horologist is a study of time from two rather distinct perspectives. The first part is a well researched study of early ventures into time-keeping in different parts of the world and his discussion of the history of mechanical time keeping by investigating the construction of large mechanical clocks from the thirteenth century on wards is lucid and valuable. Inexplicably ne changes track and meanders into the impact of time and clock culture on modern civilization and goes on to claim that standardization of time led to exploitation, tyranny and oppression. Whether the mechanical clock with its relentless motion signaling the passage of time had anything to do with these rather unsavory developments is open to debate.
Human beings have always found the movement of the stars or rather the planets both mysterious and fascinating. The length of the noon day shadow seemed to vary according to the movements of the celestial bodies giving the first device of measuring time: the sun dial. The Chinese invented the clepsydra which sounded out the hours. And ancient Greece had its Tower of Winds which seems to have been an early observatory.
The tower of Winds has miraculously survived the tumultuous passage of time, though its exact function is still largely a matter of conjecture. With the rediscovery of ancient Greek and Latin texts as part of the great cultural shift that Historians call the Renaissance, mechanical means for time measurement were soon discovered and there was an early instance of civic competition when cities, states and communities started building clock towers all over in order to proclaim their status as free cities and progressive civic entities. The first mechanical clocks were introduced in 1275 and by 1600 nearly 200 clock towers existed all over Europe.
The clock tower in the Italian city of Chioggia was characterized by a sophisticated mechanism consisting of intermeshing gear wheels driven by falling weights, an early attempt at the escape mechanism which lies at the heart of all mechanical time keeping. Apart from this clock, the designer of this device, Jacopo de Dondi constructed in Padua in 1344 a n astronomical clock which gave the relative position of the planets vis a vis the Earth, a planetarium in short. The other important step towards sophisticated time keeping is seen in the Salisbury Cathedral
The author has bought into the Foucauldian paradigm that science and the growth ( I will in a subsequent Book Blog Review Seb Falk's The Light Ages). The imposition of this interpretive element in this book is a distraction and it interrupts the otherwise well constructed narrative.
The author has tried to take a global approach to the issue of time keeping and its History and has adequately explored other cultures like Islam, India and China. One major drawback lies in the fact that time keeping is closely tied to Astronomy and therefore the transition from the Ptolemaic view to the Copernican view of the Universe is a sine quo non for a comprehensive investigation.
In the sixteenth century the Roman Catholic Church made serious attempts to reform the Calendar as the celebration of Easter was seriously out of sync with the planetary motion. Apart from reforming the calendar steps were taken to measure the meridian and take correct readings of the sun as it passed over the spring equinox. Cathedrals in France and Italy were designed to function as Solar Observatories and the readings provided played an important role in reforming the Calendar, David Rooney has ignored this vital aspect and is a serious flaw.
