Keeping watch
Subtitle: a history of American time
By: Michael O'Malley
Publisher: Smithsonian Institution Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Washington
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 384
ISBN-13: 9781560986720
Subjects: Time -- Systems and standards -- United States -- History.
Description: Focusing on the period from 1820 to 1920, Keeping Watch details the far-reaching changes in American society brought about by the transition from natural to mechanical sources of time - from farmers' almanacs and religious formulations of time to regional time zones, synchronized watches, and factory punch clocks. Michael O'Malley shows how the pressures of industrialization, the emergence of the telegraph, and the spread of railroads led to a demand for uniform, consistent schedules.

Chronicling particular communities' resistance to standard time and, later, daylight saving time, Keeping Watch also examines the cut-and-paste manipulation of "real time" in motion pictures. The cumulative impact of these technological changes, O'Malley argues, was momentous, creating a harsher ethic of punctuality and an unprecedented degree of labor regimentation.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 313-374) and index.
Originally published: New York : Viking, 1990.
Table of contents: title: Time, nature, and the good citizen; title: Celestial railroad time; title: The day of two noons; title: Keep a watch on everybody; title: Therbligs and hieroglyphs; title: The golf stick and the hoe; title: Epilogue