When the big hand is on the eight and the small hand is...: Time, Technology, the Economy, and Society

Thousands of years before Timex sold an inexpensive watch that “…would take a licking and keep on ticking…” and before Swatch was selling turquoise plastic time-telling fashion statements, Chinese inventors had created elaborate devices that indicated the time. These Chinese creations and the many that followed in the Middle East and then in Western Europe were monuments for the elite and for powerful institutions. This Seminar examines briefly the long history of the invention and construction of time-telling devices. The course focuses, however, on where and why and with what consequences such devices migrated from the royal courtyards and church towers to the offices, places of business, homes, and eventually wrists of ordinary people—the people who constituted most of the population. We consider together why people wanted to tell time, how social and political and economic developments influenced that desire, and how the ability to tell time with ever increasing precision in turn affected individuals and society. Time and space are intertwined; in the late eighteenth century this becomes increasingly clear with the development of the chronometer to measure longitude. The quest for both adventure and commerce made that measurement important. The world is large and history is long, and, therefore, the course concentrates on the two sides of the English North Atlantic and mainly after 1750. What path led from the mechanical clock in Salisbury Cathedral to the dollar watch in Pennsylvania? From Stonehenge to scheduled coaches to railroad time zones?

Although we focus on technological, social, and economic issues, time intrigued philosophers and writers and visual artists, so we consider, albeit more briefly, their interactions with time telling. Course participants will explore some of the many museums in central Pennsylvania and in Washington, D.C., which provide physical prototypes of technological developments and illustrations of artistic interest in time.