About time : a history of civilization in twelve clocks / David Rooney.
Material type: TextPublisher: New York, NY : W. W. Norton and Company, 2021Copyright date: ©2021Edition: First American editionDescription: ix, 271 pages : illustrations ; 24 cmContent type:- still image
- text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9780393867930
- 0393867935
Item type | Current library | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Books | Jost Bürgi Library Reading Room | TS542 .R66 2021 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | Available | 31560000065124 |
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TS542 .R63 2004 Precision pendulum clocks : France, Germany, America, and recent advancements / | TS542 .R65 1970 The anatomy of time. | TS542 .R65 1970 The anatomy of time. | TS542 .R66 2021 About time : a history of civilization in twelve clocks / | TS542 .S28 1991 Si le temps m'était compté-- : mesure et instruments / | TS542 .S34 1976 Pendules / | TS542 .S34 1976 Pendules / |
First published in Great Britain by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Books.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Introduction: Korean Air Lines Flight 007, 1983 -- Order : sundial at the Forum, Rome, 263 BCE -- Faith : Castle Clock, Diyār Bakr, 1206 -- Virtue : the hourglass of Temperance, Siena, 1338 -- Markets : stock exchange clock, Amsterdam, 1611 -- Knowledge : Samrat Yantra, Jaipur, 1732-35 -- Empires : observatory time ball, Cape Town, 1833 -- Manufacture : Gog and Magog, London, 1865 -- Morality : electric time system, Brno, 1903-6 -- Resistance : telescope driving-clock, Edinburgh, 1913 -- Identity : golden telephone handsets, London, 1935 -- War : miniature atomic clocks, Munich, 1972 -- Peace : plutonium timekeeper, Osaka, 6970.
"A captivating, surprising history of timekeeping and how it has shaped our world. For thousands of years, people of all cultures have made and used clocks, from the city sundials of ancient Rome to the medieval water clocks of imperial China, hourglasses fomenting revolution in the Middle Ages, the Stock Exchange clock of Amsterdam in 1611, Enlightenment observatories in India, and the high-precision clocks circling the Earth on a fleet of GPS satellites that have been launched since 1978. Clocks have helped us navigate the world and build empires, and have even taken us to the brink of destruction. Elites have used them to wield power, make money, govern citizens, and control lives-and sometimes the people have used them to fight back. Through the stories of twelve clocks, About Time brings pivotal moments from the past vividly to life. Historian and lifelong clock enthusiast David Rooney takes us from the unveiling of al-Jazari's castle clock in 1206, in present-day Turkey; to the Cape of Good Hope observatory at the southern tip of Africa, where nineteenth-century British government astronomers moved the gears of empire with a time ball and a gun; to the burial of a plutonium clock now sealed beneath a public park in Osaka, where it will keep time for 5,000 years. Rooney shows, through these artifacts, how time has been imagined, politicized, and weaponized over the centuries-and how it might bring peace. Ultimately, he writes, the technical history of horology is only the start of the story. A history of clocks is a history of civilization"-- Provided by publisher.
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