On Time: The History of Western Timekeeping by Ken Mondschein, from Johns Hopkins University Press
Channel: Ken Mondschein
Date: 11/04/2022

On Time: The History of Western Timekeeping by Ken Mondschein with a forward by Neal Stephenson, available from Johns Hopkins University Press. 
https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/11589/time

Western culture has been obsessed with regulating society by the precise, accurate measurement of time ever since the Middle Ages. On Time explores the paired development of concepts and technologies of timekeeping with human thought.

Without clocks, the modern world as we know it would not exist. From the astronomical timekeeping of the ancient world, to the tower clocks of the Middle Ages, to the seagoing chronometer, the quartz watch, and the atomic clock, greater precision and accuracy have had profound effects on human society—which in turn has driven the quest for further precision and accuracy.

The quest towards automation and ease of use, which gave rise to the Gregorian calendar, the factory clock, and even the near-disastrous Y2K bug—have led to profound social repercussions and driven the creation of the modern scientific mindset.

Surveying the evolution of the clock from prehistory to the twenty-first century, On Time explains how both the technology and the philosophy behind modern timekeeping regimes came to take over the entire world.

On Time is a story of thinkers, philosophers, and scientists, and of the thousand decisions that continue to shape our daily lives.


What a joyously meticulous history of how we've understood time! I can't look at anything between a sundial and a Swatch the same way.
-- Zach Weinersmith, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal cartoons

This energetic book explores how we acquired 'our' time, when and why this occurred, and what errors needed correcting along the way. Mondschein tells these fascinating stories in ways that illuminate their historical, technological, scientific, philosophical, sociological, and theological aspects. This is a fun book that invites the cliché, 'It's about time.'
-- Kelly DeVries, historian of medieval military history

Mondschein moves effortlessly and engagingly between technical definitions and social implications, offering both a history of the science and technology of timekeeping and an exploration of the enduring impact of time as it keeps on slipping into the future.
-- Steven A. Walton, historian of medieval science

That On Time is interactive is certainly a bonus. Mondschein provides activities, or exercises, to bring alive the abstract concepts and scientific observations he describes in each chapter―a fabulous idea that should be more widely adopted if a subject lends itself to this type of experimentation.
-- Esther Liberman Cuenca, professor of medieval studies

Keywords: History, medieval history, early modern history, history of science, time, timekeeping, history of timekeeping, clocks, watches, atomic clocks, pendulums, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, William Harrison, Nevil Maskelyne, astronomy, astrology, Antikythera mechanism, daylight savings, time zones, work time, Frederick Taylor, Eadweard Muybridge, railroad time.