History of the Hour: Clocks and Modern Temporal Orders

"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

1: Introduction

2: The Division of the Day and Time-Keeping in Antiquity

3: The Medieval Hours (Hora)

4: Medieval Horologia and the Development of the Wheeled Clock

5: From Prestige Object to Urban Accessory: the Diffusion of Public Clocks in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries

6: Late Medieval Clockmakers

7: Clock Time Signal, Communal Bell, and Municipal Signal Systems

8: The Ordering of Time: The Introduction of Modern Hour-Reckoning

9: Work Time and Hourly Wage

10: Coordination and Acceleration: Time-Keeping and Transportation and Communications up to the Introduction of "World Time" Conventions

Abbreviations

Notes

Bibliography

Index