The Wolsenburg Clock
Edition: First
Publisher: Thistledown Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Saskatoon, SK, Canada
Language: eng
Number of pages: 176
ISBN-13: 9781897235621
Subjects: Medieval Monumental Astronomical CLocks
Genres: Fiction
First sentence: When I was offered the chance to look into the workings of the Wolsenburg astronomical clock, I accepted with the sense of delight a child has at a whirring, spinning thing.
Description: The Wolsenburg Clock  chronicles the development of a complex machine, and the risks and devotion that went into its construction throughout the Medieval, Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Modern periods of history.

In a small Austrian city near the Italian border, a Canadian academic wants desperately to save a 600-year-old artifact while Second World War bombs terrorize the area. The artifact, a fourteenth century astronomical clock, has been constructed and restored by a series of gifted individuals dedicated to producing the finest timepiece of their age. From its creation in the newly consecrated cathedral in Wolsenburg, to its near-demise in a unruly fire, to it’s final incarnation as the most impressive clock ever built, the academic uncovers the secrets and infatuations of the clock’s remarkable engineers. This magical device — that kept time, charted celestial motion, and entertained parishioners with a show of automated figures — was not built without personal costs.

Creating an engaging fiction about an extraordinary contraption and its brilliant mechanics, Jay Ruzesky also sketches the battle between the Church and the scientists of the time who desired to be at the forefront of social conscience as time became understood and measured in new ways in Western Europe.
Table of contents: pagenum: 11
title: Prologue; title: The Medieval Clock – 1378; title: Entr’acte; title: The Renaissance Clock – 1585; title: Second Intermission; title: The Enlightenment Clock – 1809; title: Epilogue