History of the hour : clocks and modern temporal orders / Gerhard Dohrn-van Rossum ; translated by Thomas Dunlap.

Translation of: Die Geschichte der Stunde.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 435-439) and index.

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.

History of the Hour presents the first sustained and reliable treatment of how mechanical clocks functioned in cities and dispels many myths associated with the clock's history. For example, Dohrn-van Rossum argues that, in their race to display the grandest clocks, monarchs and princes were more responsible than merchants for introducing clocks into urban environments. This work also questions what is generally believed regarding the clock's invention, including the.

Role of the hour-glass, the arrival of the mechanical clock before scientific rationality, and the obscure history of the escapement, the clock's regulating mechanism.

In English, translated from the German.

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History of time and timekeeping - scientific philosophica;