Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World, First Edition (Belknap Press) [Paperback]

David S. Landes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1983 | Series: Belknap Press

The mechanical clock was one of the technological advances that brought Western civilisation to a position of world leadership. The book details how and why this breakthrough occurred through an historical journey.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A wonderful book...It's richly detailed and illustrated, extremely informative, and thoroughly enjoyable. (Los Angeles Times Book Review )

David Landes is a splendid storyteller...The book abounds with anecdotes about people, not only those who made the clocks and watches but also those who bought and used them...Without doubt, this book will become a standard work in the history of timekeeping--and it's also fun to read. (Derek Howse Washington Post )

The text scintillates with wise and witty aphorisms...Landes notes that clocks are the product of 'ingenuity, craftsmanship, artistry and elegance': so is this book. (David Cannadine London Review of Books )

[Landes] has an eye for the odd, amusing detail and manages to convey a great enthusiasm for his subject...His book contains a wealth of piquant information that left me musing when I closed it. (Tracy Kidder New York Times Book Review )

Stunning...Revolution in Time fairly radiates the author's own delight. Like the classic clocks it so lovingly describes, it is an exhilarating monument to human ingenuity. (Jim Miller Newsweek )

The book is a pleasure to read, for the quality of the author's thinking, for the slightly acid perceptiveness of his observations, and for the often enchanting aptness of his quotations and examples. (E. J. Hobsbawm New York Review of Books )

About the Author

David S. Landes is Coolidge Professor of History and Professor of Economics, Emeritus, Harvard University, and the author of The Wealth and Poverty of Nations.

Product Details

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press/Belknap; 1st edition (December 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674768027
• ISBN-13: 978-0674768024
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,300,429 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful history of technology and competitive change, December 19, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World, First Edition (Belknap Press) (Paperback)

I read this book in it's first incarnation, when I first became interested in horological collecting. Mr. Landes writes an informative and educational treatise on horological development and history, and in the process creates an illuminating case study of the impact of competitive pressures on established industry. It is fascinating to take one of original "high tech" industries and see how technological change and marketplace behavior affect entire companies and national industries. The long-term history described in this book perfectly illustrates Santayana's "remember the past" concept. There are amazing parallels to technological and marketing revolutions we still see developing today. A good read, which I would recomend heartily for horological afficianados and students of business and technology.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If you love clocks, you will love this book, January 21, 2007

By 

Metallurgist (USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World, Revised and Enlarged Edition (Paperback)

If you love clocks you will love this book, but if you are merely just interested in them, you may find this book a hard slog. David Landes loves clocks - a fact that comes through loud and clear, but to some degree, I felt that this love actually was detrimental to the book because it caused him to dwell too much on minutia at the expense of a more coherent discussion of the subject. There are numerous drawings of the workings of clocks, but they were not clear enough for me. (I am not that interested in clocks, but if I were and had more background in horology, I would have probably been able to decipher the drawings more readily.)

This book covers all aspects of clocks, from the need for them, to their manufacture and the economics of producing them, to the development of electronic clocks. As such, it was quite interesting. I especially liked the early sections, which discussed the historical need for clocks and those sections that dealt with the impact of external historical events, such as the persecution of French Huguenots. Unfortunately, I did not find some of the middle sections, which dealt with the question of the evolutions of the internal workings of mechanical clocks, to be sufficiently clear for me. This is an area where those who are more familiar with the details of escapement mechanisms will find the book easier to follow than I did. I also found that the details of who made what change in the escapement mechanism to be a bit more information than I needed. All in all, this is a very good book for those who love clocks and know a bit about their workings, but others who are more historically minded, without a particular love of clocks, may find themselves looking to see how much more they had to go. If I could, I would have given this book five stars for those who love clocks, but only three stars for those, like myself, who are more interested in the historical aspects of the subject.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars pretty excellent, October 1, 2007

By 

S. Pactor "reader" (San Diego, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World, Revised and Enlarged Edition (Paperback)

I'm a lawyer- my time is billable in increments of one tenth of an hour. At larger law firms (I don't work for a firm) lawyers are expected to BILL- BILL- in excess of 2100 hundred hours a year. To "bill" an hour basically means that you not only work the hour, but record the manner in which you spent it. Nowadays, we have computer programs to facilitate this task- but the act of keeping records of how you spend your time- it is deeply unatural, and my expereience as a lawyer has caused me to have a minor interest in the relationship between time and the development of modernity.

How important was the invention of the mechanical clock in the middle ages? Very, for you see... it was the first mechanical clock that gave us... the beat.

"The achievment of the genius who built the first mechanical clock was not that he used an escapment as that he had made use oscillatory motion to divide time into countable beats."

Do you get it? IT'S THE BEAT.

Anyway, I found the actual organization to be overly schematic. In Landes' words, "It is a triptych: a study in cultural history; in the history of science and technology, and in social and economic history. I now offer you one sentence summaries of this book and those subjects, so that you will not have to read a 360 page book.

The first segment of the book answers the question "Why did Europe invent the mechanical clock, as supposed to the Chinese." The Chinese (and the Islamic) world were using sophisticated water driven clocks while Europe was being sacked by the Vikings. However, they never moved on to the mechanical clock- which is superior in design- mostly because um... water clocks are big and immovable.

The second segement of the book looks at the technological/scientific improvements that brough the clock into the shape we know and love today. So we're talking fifty pages on the builiding of tower clocks in the early middle ages, the development of portable clocks in the later middle ages, the development of the marine chronograph- a device that allowed sailors to navigate longitutde accurately without reference to the night sky. The chapters on the marine chronograph was as boring a text as I've read all year.

The final segment briefs the development of the watch industry- as in- the post industrial revolution watch industry. Clockmakers are interesting in that they were making technologically sophisticated devices long before most Europeans ever used a machine, but their industry- because of its early development- retained many of the hallmarks of pre-industrial commerce long after "the handwriting" was on the wall. Thus, the English were supplanted by the Swiss in the 18th and 19th century, the Swiss were challenged by the Americans, both were surpassed by the Japanese. I actually found the information about the Swiss watch making industry to be interesting- a bunch of poor mountain folk taught themselves how to be the best watch makers in the world AND how to sell those watches "world" wide in the course of a generation.

The chapters on the Swiss watchmakers almost makes me want to go to Geneva and the Jura region- but not quite.