About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks - David Rooney

Written by David Rooney
Read by David Rooney
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
Release date: October 19, 2021
Duration: 09:57:55

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.

Former curator of timekeeping at the Royal Observatory Greenwich and director of the Antiquarian Horological Society, Rooney is the author to tell us About Time–that is, the history of timekeeping worldwide.

Note–about 60 years ago, now that wer are a global world, world organizations were seriously considering an international calendar that would be easy to follow, get rid of leap year and make months of equal length. Religions and governments thought it acceptable. Who didn’t, those who’s birthdays and anniversaries were on the missing dates and leap year.